I started online dating a few days ago. I posted on Facebook to ask my friends which dating sites they did, do or would use. There were a bunch, including Craigslist which could possibly be my last resort, but the overall consensus was Match.com, so I signed up for a three month subscription. A few of my friends have gotten married from online dating, so I saw good in it and felt safe. I spent about a day working on my profile, figuring out what I would say, how I would say it and which photos I would include. My particular profile was rejected about ten times before I had to call their customer service, reassuring them that I'm a unique individual. It's likely I'll change my profile a few times before I start getting the response I'm looking for. That doesn't mean I'm going to write what I think they want me to say, but to dig into the real me, in hopes of finding as many things as I can with what I want in a woman.
I've never been a "dating" type of guy. It's not me. I go on one date and bam, I'm all up in a relationship. My friends hate it because we'll be hanging as usual and then all of a sudden some sexy Amelia Earhart does a loop-the-loop, steals me and takes me to the Bermuda Triangle. It happens so fast that I can't even say goodbye to my friends. I disappear and since they're so used to it, no one files a missing persons report.
Then, on some dark and cold night, months after my disappearance, I'm found curled up in a ball, lying naked in a gutter with my guitar and a wet cigarette hanging out of my mouth. My heart is broken, and it's my fault. The ejection button was pushed and I didn't have a parachute. What happened was that I chose to be with a woman who is famous for flying solo, picking up passengers but not knowing it was for one-way trips. The realization that I have been looking for the wrong Amelia hits me. I should have been spending my time searching for Amelia Bedelia, not Amelia Earhart.
There is beauty in Amelia Bedelia, even though she screwed up all of the time. Her mistakes were caused by taking figures of speech and acting on them literally. There was mess, destruction, confusion and chaos. When she was asked to dust the furniture, she'd put dust on the furniture. When told to steal home plate, she took it. And she did a hell of a job at drawing the drapes. The best part of Ms. Bedelia was her good intentions. You couldn't be mad at her. She could always make you laugh, even when she wasn't trying. And her form of asking for forgiveness was usually by baking a pie or a cake. It showed humility in her, and an admittance of weakness and a reassurance that no matter what happens or has happened, she's trying her best the best way she knew how.
I'm not looking for a maid or a servant, and I'm certainly not looking for a dumb ass either. She doesn't have to have a degree, she doesn't have to have a nice car and I'm completely okay if she is still living with her parents. She can have children, or she can be unable to bear them physically. She doesn't need to have big boobs or a perfect body. I do need to see her face without makeup at some point because some girls are false advertisers and I hate being bamboozled. She'd be encouraged to wear that maid outfit sometimes, but she doesn't have to. As a matter of fact, one of my favorite looks of a woman is sweats with a hoodie with little to no makeup on, especially on a weekend morning. She can have tattoos or she can have none. She can have as many piercings as she likes, but if she has those giant plugs in her ears, stretching out her lobes like she's making spaghetti, that's a deal-breaker. She can have a bald head, or hair down to her feet. She can have a lot of money, or very little. She has to be trying in the areas that are most important to her.
What I truly want in a woman is a connection with her so unique that we're the only two people that can share it. A type of relationship that is stronger than the ones we have with our best friends, where maybe she'd consider farting in front of me if she thought it was going to make me laugh. By the way, it would. I want a woman with a creative heart, who is inspired by life and happiness, with or without me. I want a woman who isn't so concerned about having everything in order always, and knows how to relax in the time, wherever we are, and just be. I want a woman that knows how to make me laugh, and can lay on sarcasm so strong it'll force me to up my game. I want a woman that is confident and strong, but knows when to be weak and lets me be strong for her. I want a woman who lives a life full of perfectly good mistakes, so long as her intent is to pursue happiness. I want a woman that tries to see the good in all things, especially when it's difficult for me to do so. When it comes down to it, I want a woman; a real one.
In closing, and out of the love and respect I have for my daughters, this woman I speak of does not have to be a mother to my daughters. If she wants to be motherly, great, but they have mothers and they are perfect for them. The only thing I would ever ask of any woman is to encourage the relationships they have with their moms, and promote the good in all of us. If you win my heart, you're going to win the heart of the two best smelling turds in the whole wide world, who happen to fart in front of me all of the time. They learned that from their moms.
Originally posted at Full-Time Daddy