PeriLTD Nature Company

They say that when women first start dating, their fantasy perfect man is tall, dark and handsome. At the age of twenty-five they change it to tall, dark and handsome with money. At thirty-five, they change it again to tall, dark and handsome with money and a brain. At forty-eight, it’s a man with hair. And at sixty-six a man.

Because they date so much, men are becoming experts in women, and women are becoming experts in men. An expert is someone who can spot the flaws and point out the imperfections. We’re going backwards instead of forwards. Even within a loving, long-term relationship, people still feel they are being compared and evaluated - as though they were an acquisition rather than a date. And far too many have become so fussy that they end up as permanent singles, never able to settle for anybody.

While the essence of love is to be subjective, increasingly we are becoming objective about other people, so that we are unable to love them. And because we are unable to love, we cannot feel connected or make any commitment to them. This is why we are always dissatisfied, and why we start to covet some stranger instead of being happy with the person we are with.

The problem is that you probably want to feel sure that you are dating the `right’ person. By that you will mean the ‘best‘ you can possibly have. Everyone today wants the best. We are a prosperous generation, capable of purchasing the best clothes, the best microwave oven, the best television and video player, and the best politicians. So why shouldn’t your date be the best member of the opposite sex as well? Isn’t that simply logical? And isn’t it something that you deserve?

There is an important flaw in this argument. It is relatively easy to assess the best stereo system, since all we want from it is to get the best-sounding music. And we can easily make an objective evaluation of the best music by measuring tangible things like decibel level, wattage per speaker, whether we can get it into our van, and whether or not it can even make the Spice Girls sound good. The same is true of a car. We can objectively evaluate which car can accelerate from zero to sixty in as few seconds as possible, without being pushed off a cliff.

But when it comes to love and human needs, the evaluation is totally subjective. Coveting objective traits is pointless. No one can seriously believe that a tall man is ’superior’ to a short man.

I say this because I have always been vertically challenged, or in my case, vertically at war. When my mother asked what gift I wanted for my Bar Mitzvah, I responded that I wanted to grow. ‘You mean you want to grow as a person, to grow spiritually?’

`No Mom, grow literally,’ I said, as I pulled myself out from under the orange peel she had just discarded. She took me to a growth hormone specialist, who showed us a pill the size of two horses, costing thousands of dollars, and told me I’d have to take one of these each day.

`We can’t afford this, Mom,’ I said.

`Don’t worry. I can always start working nights again. It’ll be worth it for me to get out of the house.’

And never in the history of parental endeavour has so great a sacrifice produced so little for one so small.

You date for so many different things about the other person - their looks, their personality, their sense of humour, their rich daddy . . . not just for one particular quality. No one dates someone just because they have nice hair. Everyone dates out of an inner human need for company, and it is the man or woman who assuages your loneliness who is best suited for you. Therefore, dating endlessly in the pursuit of something slightly better, far from producing an even better companion, will prevent you from ever finding any real companionship at all.

I stress this point because I have met too many men and women who have given up good, happy relationships for no other reason than that they thought they may have found something slightly better. This is especially true of the more successful men and women that I meet. They think that because they are successful in their other endeavours they are entitled to the very best human being that God created. Of course, no matter how often they change their date, they are never satisfied because they can always find someone better. What a paradox: success in business means failure in loved?