Sunday, January 30, 2011

Choosing a special friend

How do you decide you want to date someone? Well, you meet someone, somewhere, you know. If they seem to have similar feelings, there you are.

But, how would you decide otherwise? Consider the online dating format. Do you meet, or run into someone in public and feel the chemistry, know they are interesting to you, and so you strike up a relationship?

No. You can't. It doesn't work that way. So, you are put into the realm of criteria, conscious thought about it, and rankings. There's no question about it.

Depending on the site or how you go about it, you either first see someone's photo, or you get search result returned depending upon your criteria. So right there, you have rated someone. If by nothing else, than age, race, distance, height, weight, perhaps even, hair or eye color, or other criteria.

Once you get your results, you have to eliminate people, narrow your search, decrease your search result pool to something manageable.

These are things we do out in public, if we meet someone, run into a stranger that intrigues us, or are introduced to someone new. Only it happens seemingly without thought, in a split second decision.

Makes us kind of hypocrites when we put someone down for using a dating service, dating site, or are even simply dismissive of a potential date because of almost any criteria we do not want. Some even say you are being vain, or "ist"-ist: racist, sexist, weightist, heightist, the list goes on.

But should we allow those in whom we are not fully, or as much as possible, attracted to? Maybe. Maybe not. But don't you want, and isn't that the stated purpose of sites like that, in that you can pick and choose before hand, who you will have to choose from?

I do not want to find the best person in the world for me, if they live in Finland. Or Turkey. I want someone local. So, I'm eliminating what? Long distance, potentially expensive relationships. For myself, I don't really care about your eye or hair color. I do have preferences for height, weight, etc.

I do not want to date a person who is 500 pounds. Sorry, I just don't. Why? Because it brings along with it, health and mobility issues. If nothing else, they won't fit in certain places, they can't do certain things. So, I"m eliminating those. If they feel bad about that, either don't, or lose weight. Or find someone who likes what you have to offer, or seek only people similar to you.

I've seen striking women who were 6'5" and I would date them, but they wouldn't date me. They didn't want to have a guy shorter than themselves and I fully understand that. It would eventually, probably, be an issue for me too, after a while.

So, if I don't want someone who is 500 pounds, then what weight is acceptable to me, what weight, should I begin to consider it a possibility? 300? 200? Now I have to consider the height. What is the tallest height of a person I might want to date? Now, as I'm not considering this of a person I'm meeting, I have to think about it and make a decision. How, do I do that?

Perhaps I consider past results of relationships, or women I've been near, or danced with, or held. What height seemed most pleasant? I found, about 5'6", preferably around 5'. For me, that means, about 90-110 pounds also.

Now, does that make me a bad person? If you say, yes. Really? Then, why? There is nothing wrong with preferences in life. There is, in fact, nothing wrong with prejudice in life.

What IS wrong, is being prejudicial out of hand, with ill intent, and stereotypically. But if you simply prefer, this over that, there is nothing wrong with that. In the end, you have to make a decision. A conscious decision is always best.

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