Monday, January 30, 2006

Dating Criteria

My friend and I went to lunch today and over our Panera ceasar salads, we were discussing men. We came up with the three basic criteria that we feel women typically look for in men when considering them for a long-term relationship, and they are as follows:
1) Personality
2) Looks
3) Career/Financial Stability

Now, once we established the criteria, we realized that most often, girls won't get a guy that is a perfect three out of three. However, we determined that if a girl could get the right combination of either a solid two out of three, or even perhaps a 3/4 in 2 areas and a 1/2 in the third, then that would be acceptable. Here are a few combinations that we felt would be make or break:

Personality + Career/Financial Stability = Make with low-risk
We felt like personality was the most important because a lot of times, if a guy has a great personality, girls will eventually find him attractive if he's only average looking or not at all attractive at first. Looks actually fall by the wayside if a guy has a solid personality and has a great career/is financially stable. However, if the guy is extremely lacking in the looks category, you do run the risk of having ugly kids.

Looks + Career/Financial Stability = Break
If a guy is extremely good-looking and has a great career but is an absolute bore or dud to be around, then girls may use him as eye-candy and a meal for a while, but will quickly grow tired of him and he won't be in the consideration set for a long term relationship.

Personality + Looks = Make with high-risk
A guy with solid personality and solid looks will typically work out long term. The only concern may be financial stress on the relationship if can't hold down a job or pay his bills.

Personality + Looks + Career/Financial Stability = Make
The ideal. As far as we can tell, these men are either extinct or on the endangered list. Obviously, this would be the ultimate equation for a committed, serious relationship.

Once we agreed to what combination of criteria we thought women could be happy with, we then moved on to take a stab at what men's criteria would be. We determined that if men had criteria, it might be these three (we're talking for a long-term relationship, not a one-night fling):
1) Looks
2) Looks. (Ha! Just kidding) Personality
3) Looks. (ok, ok, I'll stop) Convenience/Ease (meaning you guys are lazy creatures so you like women that are geographically convenient, are low-maintenance, easy to get along with, and don't come with a lot of drama)

These are what we came up with as a best guess as to the top 3 things that men look for, anyway. Any of y'all have anything different?

1 comment:

THEMARSHAL said...

Lets be honest.

1: Looks
2: Wealth (career doesnt matter if the money is there anyways)
3: Intelligence, and looks (cant have a smart girl that looks bad, I know its terrible)
4: Performance (all sports cars arent the same in certain situations and neither are women.