The ideal partner – and the question nobody asks

It was a long time ago, almost twenty years. I met a young woman who badly wanted a partner. She was single, she was looking, and she had — like most of us — a fairly precise idea of what the right man would have to be like.

The list

I asked her what this ideal partner should be like. Not on the outside. In character. Describe him to me.

She liked the question so much that she fetched paper and wrote as she went. A sense of humour. A joy in life. Affectionate. He has to be able to listen. He has to have both feet on the ground. The list grew longer, and she visibly grew happier as it did. She could say very precisely what she wanted, and she could put it well.

That is no small thing. Most people know remarkably precisely what they are looking for in someone else.

The question in return

When she was finished, I asked just one question.

How much of that do you live yourself?

It went quiet. She went through her own list again, point by point, and found that she did not live even half of it — of what she took for granted in another person.

Then I said the sentence that gave her the most to think about: if you are looking for someone who brings all of that, and you bring little of it yourself, then you are not looking for a partner. You are looking for an entertainer.

Because at that moment the question turns around. If this man really did have every one of those qualities — what would he want from you?

The message that has come every week since

For a good twenty years I have been getting the same message at least once a week. From friends, from acquaintances, passed on by others. It goes roughly like this:

Klaus, I have met someone. Could you look at a photo and tell me whether he suits me?

Anyone trained in humanmorphology knows this. We are buried in it.

Sometimes I look at the photo and can say: yes, that could work well. The delight is considerable — usually the person is long since in love anyway and only wanted it confirmed.

And then comes the uncomfortable part. He may well suit you. But that is not the question.

Do you suit him?

A relationship works both ways

That is the whole point. A partnership is not a selection in which one is examined and the other examines. It works both ways. It has to fit for both, or it fits for neither — and not after three weeks, but after three years.

That is why, with requests like these, I sometimes say something nobody wants to hear: perhaps the time is not ripe yet. Not because something is wrong with you, but because you are still missing an experience you can only have yourself. A broken heart is unpleasant, and it is a school. Only once it is behind you can you recognise the right person at all.

The young woman from back then kept her list, by the way. She only began to read it differently — not as a demand on somebody else, but as a description of where she wanted to go herself.

That is a good beginning. For most people it is the only one.

The whole thing as a video