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Permalink Reply by Harridan20 on June 16, 2012 at 8:38pm

Personally, I think for me it would be an issue for me to settle on the deal breakers. I'm not a person to quibble on minor issues however if you don't have all three qualifications then there could be a problem in the future. Even if I didn't settle one of these things I don't think I would be happy because I compromised a part of my uniqueness for a relationship with a person who doesn't accept the most important things that make up my personality. I think it's extremely shallow to choose a mate by trivial caveats like he or she MUST love sports. I've even seen profiles posted by male users who essentially are seeking an equivalent to a male hangout buddy.

Permalink Reply by Keith Brian Johnson on June 18, 2012 at 3:49pm

I think it is *essential* not to "settle" on the must-haves or the dealbreakers. Some are structural: if one person is set on a big family (something I will editorially note that none of us should be set on in an overpopulated world) and the other is set on having no kids at all, it's going to be hard to compromise. Others are preferences, but really, really strong ones: I, for example, will not try living with someone who smokes indoors. I have trouble imagining being happy in the long term when the really *big* things are not as you want them to be.

But you have to ask yourself: "What can I live with?" Can you live with your partner's having curly hair? Can you live with your partner's folding the newspaper "the wrong way"? What can you live with? What just isn't a big deal? Never make mountains out of molehills if you can help it.

To me, it seems that loving is the *easy* part. *Liking* is the hard part. Loving is just a matter of *permitting yourself to love*. But *liking*--that requires more. That requires things like enjoying the other person's sense of humor, approving of the other person's sense of values, and simply enjoying spending time with the other person. (For a highly sexual person--like me--being involved with another highly sexual person ensures enjoying spending lots of time together, so perhaps for a highly sexual person liking isn't as important as for someone who, like a friend of mine, just isn't a very sexual creature. But you still really want to be involved with someone whom you do, in fact, like as well as love.)

(Please recognize, too, that it's OK to be two different people. The one woman I've been involved with who seemed like a really good match to me left when she noticed differences between us--including, of all things, liking different things to eat--and apparently decided that that meant we were doomed. [I say "apparently" because she left and cut off all communication.] She left when we had had no fights at all and seemed very compatible. But there will always be differences.)

 

Permalink Reply by Earther on June 29, 2012 at 4:23am

I think settling is the ability to will yourself to see a future against the odds.  There are no guarantees.  Sometimes people are not able to continue a relationship by the nature of their circumstances.

Permalink Reply by George Gordner III on July 3, 2012 at 12:29pm

I have to like a woman before I will spend too much time together and feel liked by her as well. I don't like to use the word date because I have never liked dating in the first place. I feel that there are more real ways to get to know each other than just dinner and a movie.

Attraction is important, however, if you do find someone that you are compatible with, attracted to and likewise and you do wind up spending 10, 20 or however many years as friends and lovers, what happens when the beauty and whatever may have attracted two together in the first place is gone?

Outer beauty fades with time. I will not settle for a woman that I can't be in love and in love with me for a very long time. I won't settle for a woman that I don't like and doesn't like me. I would not be compatible with any woman but an atheist woman

 

 George

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