So Who Is Your Ideal Partner?

By Michael Myerscough

I was in a conversation with one of my clients recently, she was complaining that she just couldn’t find the right guy. When I asked her, “Who is Mr. Right?” I was struck by her vague response. She was looking for a man that would be nice to her and could pay his own bills.

Get specific

If you ask someone who’s looking for a new home what they’re looking to find, they’re very specific. They know exactly how many rooms they need, whether or not they want a garden, the area they wish to live in, and some people can even tell you what kind of lighting they want. Contrast this with the tiny amount of preparation people generally put into finding someone to love. I find this amazing given they could potentially be living with this person for the rest of their life. It’s not as if we can splash on a coat of paint to brighten someone up. Or how about preparing for a job interview? What salary would you like? Oh, I don’t know, anything would be better than nothing?

So getting specific is important if you want to find your perfect partner. However, when it comes to relationships people get very disturbed about the idea of planning. I often hear that it’s just not romantic. This argument always takes me back to Venice. Is Venice romantic? How do you get there? Every once in a while someone wakes up in Venice by accident, but statistically you’d be much better off developing a plan.

Define what’s important to you

As part of that planning process I have an exercise for my clients called “Three Pages to your Perfect Partner.” It’s really easy to describe but doing the work is what makes all the difference. And don’t underestimate the power of this exercise. I’ve had plenty of clients tell me after completing this exercise they managed to ‘attract’ someone perfect for them. The current record is two weeks to manifest the vision. So what are you waiting for? (Keep in mind that this is to be written in long hand. Bullet points are not enough.)

Page one is all about the things that are non-negotiable to you. Examples being (remember these are not necessarily true for you) that this person understands that infidelity is unacceptable, they aren’t addicted to alcohol or any other dangerous drug, they love, desire or adore you and are happy to support your sports addiction! You know the kind of things I mean; core agreements that must be true before you even begin to think about getting involved.

Page two is about the things that would be nice but not absolutely necessary. Examples might be they don’t smoke, they share your love of football, enjoy eating out often, have a similar educational background and they enjoy fierce debate.

Page three is the icing on the cake. Maybe you’ve always had a thing for brown eyes and dark hair. It could be you prefer someone who works out on a regular basis and loves to go cycling on the weekends. Or maybe your icing is someone that has an interest in wilderness camping, something you’ve always secretly wanted to do.

Question your current view of your ideal partner

This exercise does quite a few things. It forces you to focus on what exactly you are looking for and to evaluate whether some of your existing criteria really make sense. If you’re a five foot tall man looking for a six foot tall woman, are you making your life harder than it needs to be? Sometimes an unexamined list is a liability.  Ideally you start to remove things that are limiting you and stop settling for things you know are going to drive you insane once you get over the influence of infatuation.

It also gets you to rank what really matters to you. Some things you have been stumbling over in the past will become outdated with your new list.

In every other area of major decision we are told to get very specific about what we want and to do the research. If you know who your perfect partner is do you think you’ll be more or less likely to avoid inappropriate partners, wasted dates and painful relationship break ups?

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