The perfect man

I was looking for something in my journal and my word-search pulled this up. CW and I had been dating off and on for just over 4 months at this point and were still a long way from sexual intimacy. In frustration, on the night of June 14, 2005, he asked me this question:

"What do you want in a partner? Do you even know?"

I had two simultaneous reactions to his query, one emotional, one rational. My emotional reaction was Asshat! What, does he think I'm a ninny? My rational self thought That's not an unreasonable question. Most women don't seem to know what they want...

I let my emotional self rant and fume (internally) for about five seconds, during which time I framed my response, beginning with, "Yes, I do. Are you sure you want to know?"

Chris made the mistake of saying something like, "Of course. I wouldn't have asked if I didn't." It was a mistake, because, in my experience, people ask questions all the time that they either aren't interested in knowing the answer to (like "How are you?) or really don't want to know the answer to, but they don't know it yet (like "What do you think of my girlfriend?"). And with my singular lack of internal boundaries with people I care about, I share the truth as I know it.

So I told him, "Ok, you asked for it," and ran down my list:

My partner must be intelligent. If he isn't intelligent enough to turn on my mind, he's not going to get anywhere with my body. He must be secure in himself and satisfied in his work -- I have no patience for insecure men who are intimidated by a smart, sucessful woman, or worse, who want to either destroy those qualities in me, or hope somehow they'll be 'fixed' by being involved with me. He must be able to appreciate music, art, food, drink -- all those sensual, sybaritic, epicurean things that are the simple pleasures in life. He must have a creative outlet. I don't care if it is wood-working, model-building, writing, painting, or singing in the shower -- it can be anything, so long as he has a form of self-expression. He must be demonstrative, emotionally self-aware, and able to discuss his feelings. He must allow me my friendships with men. I cannot abide sexual jealousy, and a man who is threatened by the other men in my life will soon find himself out the door. He must be able to converse. He must be open-minded. He must be honest, both with me and himself. He must be able to laugh at himself. He must not be an obsessive sports fan. He must not be a couch potato. He must not be a workaholic, alcoholic, drug-user, or dead-beat. He absolutely must be a reader, because I am, and I resent being interrupted in my reading by attention-seeking behaviour. He doesn't have to be a sex-god, but he must be open to learning how to please me. He must be STD-free. He is not required to be monogamous, but if he wants to sleep with someone else, I'd like to know about it ahead of time, and if he does he is required to practice safe-sex because I've never had so much as a yeast infection and if I catch something from him I will soon be in prison for castrating a man and force-feeding him his own diseased flesh. He must enjoy solitude, or atleast allow me mine, because I must have me-time. He must not want me to give him children, because I can't. He must take good care of his hands, because I don't like the feel of calluses on my skin. He must have good self-control, because I am a very frustrating woman, and I do not tolerate violence from men. And lastly, he doesn't have to understand me, but he does have to love me enough to let things end gracefully when or if that time comes.

"You've found all that in a partner before?" he asked, quite incredulous.
"Of course," I answered.

Poor CW. He did ask.

What is interesting about this is that, new to the heterosexual world after 4 years with a woman and nearly a year of celibacy after that, I knew exactly what I wanted from a male partner--and these criteria are as valid today as they were 18 months ago.