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Noah -> RE: Lifetime (3/23/2007 8:44:30 PM)
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I think having EXTREMELY high standards is a great idea. It has worked amazingly well for me, anyway. But to rule out compromise in advance as either some sort of moral failing or else as a recipe for certain doom, well that just sounds like fairyland musing to me.
I've seen some profiles which proceed with detailed descriptions of what "the one" will be like. Shape, size and color, temperment, beverage preference, politics, interests, ethnicity, occasionally conjoined with a list of traits of character which I have so far never seen instantiated all together in a single person.
"You'll pull up the driveway at 6:15 in your Studebaker Avanti that gets me so hot. I'll be waiting in your favorite outfit (which by some coincidence I already own as I write this.) I'll have your favorite double mocha latte with a shot of Grenadine in hand. Your asymmetric moustache will tickle my elbow as you give me one of our special secret kisses that you will have invented, knowing that you'll love the tripe ala mode I've prepared for your supper, just before we grab a deck of cards and head down to the river for 2.6 hours of the kink play you can't live without: suspension bridge play. Yes, dear one, I will give my all to you and no one else, though I perish."
Sometimes a profile makes me think that either, A) Compromise can be a healthy, wise, deeply rewarding, even superlative thing sometimes, depending on someone's starting position. Other times I think, B) it seems I've hit on someone who believes "I'd rather die alone than learn that the world can sometimes present me with wonderful surprises."
Maybe if you click your be-rubied heels three times you're going to find that wealthy ascetic hermaphrodite nymphomaniac with a rich full life of family, friends, interests and career who wants to pay all attention henceforth to you. Maybe this person will be age 24-27, with 15 years experience running munches on seven continents in fourteen languages and at the same time a sizzling salsa dancer able to personally indulge your kink for quad amputees. Hold your breath and wait, if you like.
Or consider compromise. Your call.
I wonder if we could form some consensus that there can be some stated parameters that turn out to be fine to compromise about--even if we didn't realize that when we set them; that some others just might be worthwhile to compromise on in surprisingly special cases, and that there may be any number of other things that for a given individual probably should not be compromised on at all.
I'm just not sure that an unqualified abandonment of the very idea of compromise is the best first step to take toward relationship bliss.
Then again a lot of people seem to enjoy rigidly enforcing standards which just happen to get lower and lower as the beer disappears and closing time approaches. So part of this seems to come down to what different people mean by the differing ways they may be using the same words.
No offense to those who want to insist upon non-compromise on a small and reasonable set of carefully worked out parameters, while being open to a wide range of opportunities. I wasn't lumping you in with the pie-in-the-sky-ers. To these more reasonable people I would only suggest leaving a small crack at the doorway through which might, in a very special case, enter the person who is not only practically perfect for you, but surprisingly so.
Of course heartbreak can slip through that crack too. But, hey... no guts, no glory, right?
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