• You’re mentally and emotionally stable — I’m not your mommy. I won’t fix you.
• You’re completely available. No married folks, sorry.
• You can support yourself. There’s leeway if you’re living with your folks or temporarily unemployed, but if you need to date someone to make sure you have a place to live or don’t have a single possession or cent to your name, you’re out.

Really, I want this to be a functional relationships, and that’s what these guidelines add up to.  Of course, everything else is pretty much open, but certain things definitely mean that it’s more likely you’ll fit the criteria. For example, if you’ve got a similar sense of humor or we have overlapping interests, we’ll probably be able to hold a conversation. If you’re a hot geek type, then I’ll probably be attracted to you, so I gravitate toward the things that I know I already like, but that’s not a rule.

I don’t want to be one of those Jerry Seinfeld types, finding something tiny wrong with everyone and sending them away for silly reasons. I just expect a stable foundation, a strong connection.  This, I feel, is not too much to ask. Rationally, I know this is a good thing to look for. This isn’t a post about why the rational isn’t happening, though. That just happens to be semi-related.

No, this is about rules. I don’t care about superficial things about the job or car you have. How much money you make isn’t my business or something I care about. Imperfections can be overlooked.  Others have rules that I would find ridiculous however. They don’t care if you treat them well or are stable in any way as long as you have money. Some don’t mind being the third wheel if the sex is good. The list goes on, of course. Others have rules that I find absolutely ridiculous. But others have rules that, while they wouldn’t make sense to me, make sense to others.

There’s other types of rules, too. For example, some people wait a certain number of dates to have sex. Some have requirements for meeting someone’s parents, calling after a date or sex, dating multiple people at once and every other thing you can’t imagine.

The thing about rules that people fail to understand, however, is  that they don’t exist as a metric for finding potential matches. I’ve met plenty of people who more or less meet the requirements, but we just didn’t click. Really, I’m not so much looking for someone who will fit within the guidelines. The opposite is true. I want someone who will make me break all my rules. I want someone who makes me want to have sex the first night, skip out on planned dates, do crazy things and otherwise throw caution to the wind.

I don’t know if others are like this, but my rules don’t exist to weed out the wrong people. They’re there, instead, to help highlight the right person.

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