Oh... Your parameters will begin to tighten quite quickly! There are a TON of people out there to meet and many, many, many of them are someone else's WAW and they are spewing the type of character flaws that we have worked so hard to distance ourselves from. I've been given the advice to "make a list" of the qualities I am looking for on more than one occasion. While I don't know that I'm the type of organized person that would actually do something like that, the idea has a ton of merit. Both guys even insisted that they shared their "list" with some of their potentials to make sure they would "buy off" on the items. Again, I can't see myself doing that.
However, I do have a mental checklist of things that I look for, positive and negative items.
- Someone who can deal with the fact that I am a DEDICATED father of four kids - Physical appearance (yeah, I'm shallow) - No drama - Positive person - Someone who doesn't have to be center of attention - Someone who doesn't display obvious relationship problems *** (see below) - Someone who has children - Someone who doesn't want any more children - Someone who doesn't have a problem communicating (there are various ways to communicate effectively, they need to have one)
And it goes on a bit, but you should get the idea. You might as well start thinking about things like this yourself. Initially they don't mean all that much as you will probably just be in "practice" mode and will want to keep things casual. But at some point you'll be ready to move beyond that and will not want to waste time any longer on people who have no potential for a longer term relationship.
*** I swear, I've met people who have current restraining orders against boyfriends, boyfriends who still live with them, etc, etc.
