There’s a peculiar modern phenomenon where people approach dating like they’re configuring a new car. Must have advanced degree. Must earn six figures. Must be over six feet tall. Must love hiking. Must share my political views. Must want exactly two children. Must be emotionally available but not needy. The list grows longer with each disappointing date, each failed relationship adding another requirement to the specifications.The logic seems sound on the surface. You know what you want. You’ve learned from past mistakes. Why shouldn’t you be selective about something as important as choosing a life partner? After all, we’re told to have standards, to know our worth, to refuse to settle. But there’s a fundamental problem with this approach: people aren’t products that can be constructed to specification.
When you walk into a car dealership, you can actually get the exact combination of features you want. Leather seats, sunroof, particular color, specific engine. If this dealership doesn’t have it, another one will, or they can order it for you. The car with leather seats and a sunroof is essentially the same as the car without those features, just with additions. It’s modular. It’s designed to be customizable.
Human beings don’t work this way. The person who checks off eight of your ten boxes isn’t just missing two features that could theoretically be added. They’re a complete, integrated individual whose qualities and quirks and contradictions all relate to each other in ways you can’t predict or control. The confident ambition you find attractive might be inseparable from a certain inflexibility. The emotional sensitivity you crave might come packaged with occasional moodiness. The spontaneity that excites you might mean struggles with long-term planning.
This isn’t to say you should have no standards whatsoever. There are legitimate dealbreakers, fundamental requirements that genuinely matter for compatibility and wellbeing. Mutual respect is non-negotiable. Kindness matters. Shared values around major life decisions like whether to have children or where to live are genuinely important. But these should be few and fundamental, not an exhaustive catalog of desired attributes.
The problem with long checklists is that they’re often built from a place of fear rather than wisdom. Each requirement represents a way you’ve been hurt before or a anxiety about the future. Your ex was irresponsible with money, so now financial stability is mandatory. Your previous partner wasn’t ambitious enough, so now career success is essential. Someone once made you feel intellectually inferior, so now a graduate degree is required. You’re building walls disguised as standards, using your checklist to protect yourself from vulnerability rather than to find genuine connection.
What’s more, these extensive requirements often reflect an imaginary ideal rather than lived reality. You might be certain you need someone who loves outdoor adventure, but if you’re honest, you go hiking twice a year. You might insist on someone who shares your taste in music and film, but some of the happiest couples you know have completely different entertainment preferences. You might demand someone who’s always emotionally available, but you yourself have days when you need space and solitude.The checklist approach also fundamentally misunderstands how love actually develops. Chemistry, compatibility, and connection emerge through interaction, not through matching criteria. Some of the most successful relationships begin with people who wouldn’t have chosen each other on paper. She thought she needed someone serious and ambitious, but she fell for someone playful and present-focused who taught her not to take life so seriously. He was certain he wanted someone who shared his love of sports, but he built a life with someone whose passion for art opened up entirely new dimensions of experience.
This doesn’t mean compatibility doesn’t matter or that opposites always attract. It means that real compatibility is often about something deeper and less quantifiable than the attributes on your list. It’s about rhythm and resonance, about whether you bring out better versions of each other, about whether your differences complement rather than conflict. These things can’t be determined from a profile or a checklist. They reveal themselves through time and experience.
There’s also something fundamentally presumptuous about approaching another person with an extensive list of requirements. It positions you as the buyer and them as the product, you as the judge and them as the auditionee. It ignores the reality that they’re also choosing you, also bringing their own needs and hopes and dealbreakers to the table. A relationship is a collaboration between equals, not a hiring process where you’re the only one conducting interviews.
The irony is that people with shorter, simpler lists of requirements often end up happier. When you’re not constantly measuring your partner against an impossible standard, you’re free to appreciate who they actually are. When you’re not fixated on what’s missing, you can see what’s present. When you’re not trying to find someone who checks every box, you’re available to be surprised by someone who brings qualities you didn’t even know you wanted.
This requires a certain courage and maturity. It means accepting that no one will be perfect, that every person you date will have qualities that annoy or disappoint you in some way. It means being willing to be flexible about things that don’t actually matter as much as you thought they did. It means trusting yourself to navigate the complexity of a real relationship rather than trying to engineer the perfect situation upfront.
The goal isn’t to have no standards or to accept whatever comes along. It’s to distinguish between the few things that genuinely matter and the many things that don’t. It’s to approach dating with curiosity rather than criteria, with openness rather than optimization. It’s to recognize that you’re not shopping for a product but connecting with a person, and people can’t be constructed to specification no matter how detailed your blueprint.
So yes, know your actual dealbreakers. Be clear about your fundamental values. Understand what you need to be happy and healthy in a relationship. But keep that list short. Keep it focused on essentials rather than preferences. Keep it flexible enough to accommodate the reality that the right person for you might look different than you imagined. Because at the end of the day, you’re not looking for someone who matches a list. You’re looking for someone you can build a life with, and that requires encountering them as a whole person rather than a collection of features to be evaluated.