I’ve pointed the limited and narrow dating requirements women tend to seek in potential dates. Men tend to be more liberal, when it comes to physical characteristics, we are picky in other ways. I’ve always thought I needed a woman who loved sports as much as I do, when in actuality I needed a woman who understood my love for sports. It was the quality of the person that had given me the success I have, instead of a check list of requirements. I’m not suggesting all requirements be discarded, I’m merely saying they aren’t the primary focus.

An illustration would be a person who loves metal music. If you love Hip-Hop, it’s not a reason for you to remove them from your dating pool. Metal and Hip-Hop have produced some great artists (i.e. Linkin Park, Korn) and the two genres perform cross overs often (listen to Lil’ Wayne’s recent album or the Linkin Park/Jay-Z Mashup Album). A person who loves metal is different from them not liking music at all. A roommate of mine dated someone who hated music, he was a musician. Things didn’t work out.

When you’re searching for someone new, consider the things you would really like to do with that person. Walks on the beach? Trips the museum? Cuddling on a cold, rainy day? Watching TV together? Those things transcend beyond the ever growing checklist of requirements; the need for someone to be over 5’7” because it would be awkward; or the need for curves on a woman. Our checklists may determine how we rank people, who’s on our A, B, and C lists, but it’s not the focus of dating. eFlirtExpert Laurie Davis describes very well what happens with our dating lists as we begin to date someone (for men, read my explanation).

If you’re sticking to your guidelines, patterns emerge and when you alter the guidelines, your dating patterns may change. It may seem as a success at first, but it doesn’t guarantee the quality of your dates increase. If you started dating musicians instead of artists, that doesn’t mean you’ll stop finding assholes, it just means the assholes now play music instead of paints. While dating, I had to stop myself from meeting people at a particular bar, I wasn’t finding any quality. It didn’t mean when I went to other bars I was finding better women, honestly, I found just the same.

When I began to determine what I was seeking in a woman (humor, the ability to go to a sports game, someone who understood me, a person who enjoyed music), I began to quality dates. With my end result, I don’t feel I’ve settled at all.

Photo by: Ezwa

When I started with Laurie Davis, she asked me who my cookie cutter woman was. What was she like? I rattled off a bit of superficial checklist items, she had to be tall, had to be into sports, and so on. My dream woman was the love child of Angelina Jolie, Megan Fox, Brooklyn Decker and Lucy Lu. This woman exists in two places, my dreams and fantasies.

The perfect man doesn’t exist. No one person is perfect. It’s evident by the many single women who seek for their perfect guy only to find him and realize that something isn’t right. Someone once told me she kept dating musicians, and after several failed relationships, decided to date non-artists. She’s currently single and unhappy, because she only changed what the guy did as a requirement, instead of the type of guy.

While single, I was often asked why I didn’t have someone. Some of the reasoning, I’ve explained it to be a problem with the type of women I was seeking. However, it’s not all me. Especially online, women filter their preference of men along very narrow guidelines. Height, for an example, is one such requirement. Having to be over 5’7″ to be dateable is the silliest thing I’ve heard women use. They fell it’s too awkward dating a shorter man. Do they ever think how awkward it may be dating a shorter woman?

Women will seldom get their gingerbread man as they think of him. Like gingerbread man, there are many variations are just as delicious, if not better tasting, but use different recipes. If the gingerbread man your eating keeps making you sick, why not try a different type?

Photo by dichohecho

One of my new favorite reads is More Magazine.  Although, I’m officially out of their target demographic, at 39 I’m not quite “old enough” (they “celebrate women 40+”), hehe.

The truth is that as much as I like some of the other mags for women, I feel left out. So many of the articles in other mags are obviously written by and for women in their 20s/early 30s.  And the differences in our life experiences is rather glaring, at times.

So today I was taking a break and reading More and came across this.  A question we’ve pondered here, on the blog, many times:  Why do men in their 40s think I’m old? Although I think the WHY is kind of obvious - because they can. I don’t love the advice given, nor do I hate it.  As a woman who lives with this issue I constantly have to remind myself that not ALL men in their 40s think I’m old.  Only some.  And while I have widened my search (I’ve always dated older and am now trying to convince myself to be open to younger) I haven’t given up on those guys in their 40s either.

To say that men aren’t afraid of settling is as lie, although I believe we’re more willing to date different types of women. Every so often we get stuck in selective dating, or dating a particular person. The point of dating is to determine who is right and wrong for you, this is why it’s called dating and not commitments. During the dating process, we cannot be so picky we refuse to find out what our preferences are.

Imagine you were blind, how would you determine your lover? You couldn’t use our current dating preferences to find someone as they would be irrelevant. You wouldn’t know how tall a person is, how much they weigh, or their ethnicity to determine if we were attracted to them. Instead, you would have to rely on the chemistry you have with them. I was reminded about this fact while watching Eddie Griffin’s Going for Broke (the clip at the top of this post.) We have to do a better job in looking at a persons character and stepping outside of our own boxes when dating. You might be surprised by what you find.

It begins with the “Have It Your Way” mentality to dating. I may sound like a broken record, but I believe this is a huge stumbling block for all women. Stop shrinking the size of your dating pool with unreasonable requirements. Reasonable requirements are having a steady job, not being on drugs or maintaing proper hygiene. Unreasonable requirements are selecting men who only drive BMW’s, taller than 5’11”, and have green eyes. Imagine the possibilities if some of these dating requirements were relaxed (so instead of a BMW, maybe your perfect guy is driving a Toyota, or is 5’9”.)

The narrower your selection of men, the more likely you’re going to continue dating the same type of guy. Many tend seek a very specific type of guy when they find him are thrilled. He’s “perfect”. They tend to over look his major faults. I’ll be honest with you, the perfect guy does not exist! We tried to build him, but ended up with shiny Twilight vampires. Like everyone else, men have our faults and we can be compensating for them. Seeking a “mans-man”? He’s likely going to be insecure or jealous. Want a toned pretty boy? I hope your ready to meet his other three girlfriends. Seeking someone very effeminate? Don’t be surprised when his boyfriend appears. By pigeonholing your dating selection, you will only find those type of men. The very effeminate, pretty boy mans-man, does not exist! Take a moment and reflect on all of the bad relationships you’ve been in and why they’ve ended. Now compare these guys to each other. If your finding many similarities between each of these men, date a different type of guy!

All men have a very different relationship with sex than women. You make us feel bad about it. Stop! Moxie’s post started with a question from a women who spent two days with a guy in his place, cuddling and kissing. No sex. How sex wasn’t involved is beyond me, but I have some assumptions. The idea that men only think about sex is well overblown, women you think about it as well, probably more than we do. We approach sex differently, the difference is if something goes wrong we don’t have to deal with a 9 month pregnancy. This isn’t being an asshole, it’s pure biology. There’s less risk for us. If the men you’re attracting just want sex, re-read the paragraphs above and begin searching for a new type of guy. If you spend two days at a guys apartment kissing, there should be some sex going on. Even if he doesn’t bring it up. This isn’t a guy thing, this is a human thing. If we’re in a situation that usually leads to sex, we’re going to act on that impulse.

At some point, women have to stop buying into the “all men are assholes” myth; that sex is our only priority; and the perfect guy who fits a list of requirements is out there. Shows and movies like Sex in The City and magazines like Cosmopolitan have warped your mind. Many of the advice you receive is just as good as the advice we get from Maxim. You have to stop being irrational about the people you want to date, what you want from a guy, and what you’re truly looking for. This is why your accepting less. You keep on dating guys who give you a tiny bit but fit your insane requirements, and that makes you happy. If Megan Fox were to send me a message on Facebook that she wanted to have dinner at the last minute, I would be the happiest guy in the world. I wouldn’t care if it was rude and ruined my evening, just that a super hot girl wants dinner with me tonight. If you want someone who’s a gentleman, funny, and exiting, it shouldn’t matter that he lives in Flatbush or the Upper West Side. The 2 Train has stops in both areas.

Recently, I described being turned down for a date because of my ethnicity. I wasn’t the first time I was turned down due to the color of my skin, and it won’t be the last. I’m always surprised by racism in the dating scene, you would think singles would find better reasons to turn down potential matches rather than a person’s skin color. A part of this, I’m sure, is due to narrow dating preferences, but there is a difference between a preference and denying a person because of their race.

While I’m Hispanic/Black, I’ve dated more White women than Blacks and Hispanics combined even though my favorite dates are generally with Black and Hispanic women (I can’t explain that at all!) Ironically, my fantasy girl would be an Asian woman with a British accent, in part because I’ve not dated an Asian woman or any one from Britain. While both aspects are important for my fantasy girl (a girl who on a scale of 1 to 10 ranks as a 20) they aren’t important aspects in the people I seek to date. If my fantasy girl turned out to be Black instead of Asian, she would still rank as a 20. In my dating world, ethnicity isn’t important, I look at race the same way I do Ice Cream. I love Strawberry but sometimes I want Vanilla, sometimes Chocolate, and other times Butter Pican (bonus points for those who gets the Wu-Tang reference.)

I’ve also think some of this dating racism is institutionalized. CNN reported on a couple in Louisiana who was denied marriage by A justice of the peace because they were an interracial couple. This person does not marry interracial couples and claims not to be racist. It made me re-think about the role ethnicity plays in the dating world and the pressures. I’m know many interracial couples get weird looks when they are out in public. It’s an uncomfortable feeling, as if they have done something wrong. What’s wrong about dating the person you like?

If we singles are truly seeking our perfect match, why is the color of a persons skin such an important factor? It makes me wonder why there’s the option to choose ethnicities on dating websites (shouldn’t it matter as long as you have a great match with someone else?) What’s really not said about the role ethnicity plays. Everyone makes assumptions about a person based on their ethnicity. We all do it, even if just a little. No one ever admits to it, but it’s true. While dating, we’re all a bit bigoted (a person’s height, job, weight, etc.) but many times people overcome dislikes because of a person’s personality and character. So why is race any different?

All of this questioning leads me to ask how much racism is there in dating? Have you ever rejected anyone because of their ethnicity? Or strictly date a certain ethnic group? Or does it not matter at all?

Updated – 10/17/09 – 8:40pm

Shortly after writing this post, I found (randomly) a blog post about race and reply rates released by OkCupid. Here, there are numbers indicating how likely a person of a certain race would reply to another person and general thoughts of people and idea of dating someone outside of their ethnic group. These numbers are very interesting and help prove my point here. What I would have liked to see from OkCupid’s numbers is a breakdown of religion and race, which I think helps answer some of the questions about racism in dating. They also released a race and religion break down which is pretty interesting. I highly recommend reading their blog post here: http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/2009/10/05/your-race-affects-whether-people-write-you-back/

(Image Credit: Vincent J. Brown on Flickr)

Men have dating preferences but they tend to be very flexible. An example would be my height requirement, I prefer tall women, since I’m tall myself (6’2”), but it’s not a requirement. If I met someone attractive but was 5’2”, I would consider dating her. Many of the women I know aren’t as flexible in their dating preferences, they are too many requirements. It feels as if your battling against a list of “and’s” and deemed dateable only if you match a narrow set of height, weight, eye color, type of job, skin color, and hair type requirements.

Settling is when you have nothing in common with the person your dating and your with them because you feel you cannot do better. Not meeting the requirements on a checklist is more like buying software for my computer, not dating. Most of my frustration stems from this issue when dating. Am I the only one who’s been frustrated by these unrealistic requirements?