Falling in love is sweet, intoxicating and it makes it easier to overlook things that bother you. The question is should you overlook them. Some stuff is a no brainer. He/she drinks too much or can’t keep a job. It's the smaller issues that sneak up and take you by surprise.
These daily irritations are like dandelions on an otherwise spotless lawn. You notice them, but say to yourself it isn’t that big a deal. You don’t want to go crazy with pesticide, so you pop off the one bloom you see. Dandelions have deep root systems that make them hard to get rid of. One bloom is an indication that there are more.
So, you have been dating someone for 3 months, thinking there may be a future here… then you start to notice a series of issues that annoy the s@#$ out of you. He/she does everything at the last minute. He/she has difficulty with abstract thought. They aren’t good in bed. Exercise is not a priority for them, but they are good looking, professionally successful and have awesome leadership abilities. He/she is a great friend. Maybe, this is the love of your life.
If you are looking for a touchy feely treatise, stop reading here. Long term relationships, in my opinion, are like mergers. Two companies should have similar goals and bring complimentary assets to the table. They should be better as one entity than two. Otherwise, why merge? If there are components that prevent an increase in market share, the merger will dissolve. Remember, Time Warner and AOL?
Let’s go shopping! Many people create a long list of what they want in a person. Some include deal breakers. Others go the extra mile and add their pet peeves. Amy Webb wrote Data, A Love Story on just this subject. She attributed her string of bad dates to not knowing what she needed to make her happy. Her sister said that such a list would make the search harder, like looking for a needle in a haystack.
If you are dating someone that has everything you want and none of the deal breakers, congrats, but you are not home free. Make a list of pet peeves and keep ‘em handy. If that person exhibits more than three, you are headed for some white water.
Elizabeth Gilbert wrote Committed as the follow-up to Eat, Pray, Love. She was not inclined to get married again until her lover, Felipe, faced deportation, forcing her to re-examine the issue. Committed is the product of her inquiry. After making a list of her worst attributes and sharing them with Felipe, she asked him how he could still love her. He responded with a story.
“So when I first started in the jewelry business, I used to get in trouble because I’d get too excited about the one or two perfect aquamarines in the parcel, and I wouldn’t pay as much attention to the junk they threw in there.
After I got burned enough times, I finally got wise and learned this: You have to ignore the perfect gemstones. Don’t even look at them twice because they are blinding. Just put them away and have a careful look at the really bad stones.
Look at them for a long time, and then ask yourself honestly, ‘Can I work with these? Can I make something out of this?’ Otherwise, you’ve spent a whole lot of money on one or two gorgeous aquamarines buried inside a big heap of worthless crap.”
If someone seems like the perfect match, but they REALLY get on your nerves, ask yourself can you live with the whole package? Annoyances have deep root systems; they go away for a little while, but always come back.
Epilogue
Amy created her own scoring system. What she found is that “there were plenty of nonsmoking, nondrinking, culturally Jewish, thirty-two to thirty-five-year-olds who also had nice photo galleries on JDate.” By applying her scoring system to potentials, she narrowed the field, increasing her odds. She found her guy, but he didn't like her.
Then she created 10 fake male profiles to do some market research. Ingenious approach! Incidently, Amy found her man!
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