Perfection

One reason some people are lonely is that their dates don't live up to their standards.    So lets talk about perfection.


Is anything perfect?  Is everything perfect?   Consider the best hammer in the world.  It is ideally crafted to push any nail into a piece of wood, plastic, or even concrete.   With the slightest effort it can insert (or remove with the claw head) the smallest nail or the biggest one.


Now I give you a screw.  Is your tool perfect?  Or rather crappy?

When you say an item is 'perfect' you are actually defining it's purpose, or at least claiming to define it.   By stating it is perfect you are stating you know what the item or person's purpose is.

I look out my window and see a very gray, cloudy day.  Is the sky perfect?   Yes, if god wanted to provide shade on this summer day. Yesterday it was blue without a cloud in the sky.  That also could be perfect.

So, when talking about a potential date,  if you call them perfect, you really mean they are perfect for you.    But certain qualities are on almost EVERYONE'S  list.  Tall/thin, wealth/beauty, are good examples.  That means Mr. Perfect-for-you is also Mr. Almost-Perfect for most other people.  Chances are Ms. Competitor has already snapped up your Mr. Perfect and is willing to live with the one thing he does that she doesn't like (even if you wouldn't care.)   Why did Ms. Comeptitor do that?  Well, in a world of 7 billion people, she gave up looking for Mr. Perfect and decided to go with Mr. Right.  
The real question is, why do we obsess about looking for Mr./Ms. Perfect instead of looking for Mr./Ms. Right?

Part of the reason is we are cynical. We have been burned before - often by people who seemed really nice.   In fact they seemed too good to be true, but turned out to be Mr./Ms. Wrong.   So we don't just accept everyone at face value, instead we discount everyone.   But instead of distrusting people that seem too good to be true, this encourages us to look for someone that appears BETTER than Mr./Ms. Wrong seemed to be.  That way, even it turns out they lied, their lie will still be 'acceptable'.

Another reason why we prefer looking for Mr./Ms. Perfect instead of Mr./Ms. Right, is our culture.  We grow up with stories of True Love.  Worse, we pay more attention to the Princess Bride, then we do to Romeo & Juliet.   That is, we like stories with happy endings and for a romantic story, that is usually a wedding.   But a wedding is a beginning, not an ending.       Our fiction leads us to look for Mr./Ms. Perfect, instead of Mr./Ms. Right.


It's not just fiction either.  People usually hide the problems in their relationships, presenting a happy front to all.  So when we look around we see all these happy couples - until those happy couples suddenly break up because they never were happy in the first place.

We need to stop looking for Mr./Ms. Perfect and look for Mr./Mrs. Right.  They will have flaws, things we don't want in them.   But that's OK, because honestly, so do we.

The trick is making sure the flaws ARE something we can live with.   That decision is far more important than whether they are tall enough, pretty enough, rich, enough, etc.    Don't try to marry the Perfects, but don't accept the Wrongs either.  Look fro Mr./Mrs. Right.