After years of experience dating all sorts of women, I've gotten pretty good at determining what constitutes compatibility insofar as who might be compatible with me.
This took time, but I started early. As a teenager, I wasn't really interested in woman until my father gave me "the talk."
My father, an old school New York Italian, is a cross between Archie Bunker, Fred Flintsone, Joe Pesci and Robert DeNiro. With an immense vocabulary and an IQ of 140, his discipline of me usually included words that required extensive research in a Webster's Dictionary.
His sex talk however, was rudimentary at best. It came in between commercials while the family was watching an episode of All In The Family...the episode were Gloria was announcing her pregnancy. He simply leaned over from his recliner and said "look, you're playing with a load gun now, watch out." Sitting arm in arm with my mom on the couch, I was mortified. I was 14 and hadn't even seen a woman topless (this was before the Internet and the JC Penney catalog was hardly the best way to cure that problem.) Thus began my interest in women, because naturally, when a parent tells you not to do something, you want to do it more.
For awhile, I was the Forrest Gump of dating. I didn't have a problem with charm or chivalry, but I had real problems missing certain signs (as evidenced by many of my preceding blog posts). It took several mistakes, years of dating women who proved incompatible even though, by and large, my serious relationships were pretty good. None of them were crazy or bad people, but we just didn't work out. But it was the dating periods in between my relationships that made me increasingly astute. Today, I have a roster of tactics and questions I use to measure compatibility with my love-interests. At the risk of divulging state secrets, these seem as good as any for me in the 40's:
1) Try the person out for no more than three dates. Then take a few days to evaluate and if you've identified any red flags (for you), simply state "I'm sorry, I don't think you're what I'm looking for." Three dates is all you really need in order to get past the initial mutual chemistry evaluation.
2) No kissing on the first date. It sends the wrong message, anyway.
3) No intimacy for three months. My own experiences are that if one breaks this rule, it is because of infatuation, although many if us convince ourselves that it's because we feel a deep connection.
4) Develop a list of "must haves, deal breakers and red flags." Don't compromise on the red flags. Ever. The second you get her last name, Google her.
5) After three months, evaluate again. If things are good, jump in with both feet. But continue to evaluate. Look for addictions, bad behavior, signs of abuse, etc. this is a good time to run a background check. If you don't, don't get upset that you found something in her past later on. You wouldn't buy a house without an inspection, why would you try to make a home without dying your due diligence? Trust, but verify.
6) Keep it moving forward. Re-evaluate at 6 months, 9 months and a year. If it's not moving forward, it's going nowhere. Cut your losses and say goodbye. By this time, you should be meeting each other's friends, too. Take at least one vacation together.
7) Don't cohabitate for at least a year. You want to truly know someone? Live with them...at some point.
8) Don't start mixing finances, accounts, or intertwining your lives too much. This also means that you should NOT add each other to your FB until you've been together for at least a year. Surveys show that 37% of all breakup a listed FB as a factor.
9) Prior to getting engaged or moving in, meet each others parents and mix with them a few times...and observe.
Rules are great, but let's look at how I put it all into practice.
For starters, I'm not in the business of buying random strangers expensive dinners, so the first meet up is for coffee or cocktails. I know a quaint, hip coffee shop in Santa Ana that I use called "The Gypsy Den."
The second date is usually at a local watering hole called "Mesa" for drinks. If it goes well, we roll right into dinner.
The third date is something like Charlie Palmer's or Andrei's lounge in Irvine.
For me, the three date rule ONLY works because I've developed a roster of questions that I work into conversations over the three dates. Here are some of them:
- Where do you see yourself in 5 years? 10?
- What was the best gift you ever received? I'm looking for something thoughtful, not expensive.
- What are your career goals? If she has none, that means her goals are to marry money.
- If I were to run into your ex, what would HE say was the reason you broke up? This is usually very insightful. If she says things like "my demands were too high, he never did anything nice for me," these could be warning signs.
- What was the best date you ever had? Again, if she says a weekend in Hawaii, run.
- How is your relationship with your dad? If she's not close to him, that's a bad sign for a myriad of reasons.
- How was your parents marriage?
- If you never got married, how much would you need to make a year to live comfortably? Another probing question.
- If you hit a lottery scratcher for $10,000, what would do with the money? If she says things like 'payoff bills,' that's another red flag.
- What was the most touching thing an ex ever did for you? Look for something he did, not how much he spent.
- Which is worse in a marriage? Cheater (even though no one knows but you). Financial uncertainly. He loses his sex drive.
- How many of your married girlfriends still have jobs? You are the friends that you keep. If they don't work, you can bet she doesn't want to.
- If your friend were dating a guy that no one found attractive and he offered to pay for all her bills, but her a car., etc if she moved in with him, what would you tell her to do?
- Let's say you loved a guy and he treated you well, but found out you made more than him, would you still marry him?
- You've obviously sensed a theme by now. You're looking for character, integrity, a sense of entitlement and whether or not she values money over all else.
- Your girlfriend decides that she doesn't feel like having sex with her husband anymore. What do you tell her to do?
Clearly, I've focused on evaluating her character, integrity and morals to see if we're a match. I'm not judging them, I'm judging our compatibility.
From a woman's perspective, there is still a profound sense that men need to be the providers and until there's true wage equality in America, there's some logic to that. I do believe that a man should go in believing that he has ultimate responsibility for providing a certain level of security, but most men today are not looking for a dependent. From a survey of my male friends, they all agree that they will tend to respect his woman more if she makes a contribution to the household.
I'm not sure if any of this makes sense to anyone but me, but there it is nonetheless. Will it be helpful to others? I'd love to hear from you if it did help.
But of course I remember that a wise man once said, "if you want good financial advice, get it from a financially secure person," so perhaps no one should be taking advice from a guy who dates Hamsters.
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another great read, thank you
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