When your dating strategy is smart and when it sentences you to be single and bitter about it.

From the very beginning let me warn you that this article will be filled with metaphors, so if you are not a huge fan of metaphors, then this article is probably not for you.

Anyway, let’s imagine that you have bought a new apartment. You have invested lots of time and energy to find it and lots of money to buy it. Now you want your apartment to look perfect. After all you have worked so hard to get it and you plan living there for a long time. You dream to spend cozy evenings there, to invite your friends and family to gather around a big table, to place a big Christmas tree in the corner, even to work from home, while seating comfortably by the window with your computer. You have all these big plans in your head when you go furniture shopping.

Of course it would be nice to hire an interior designer who might have helped you to use your new space wisely, perhaps the designer could suggest you a few options that might help you place all the things you really need and to make the place look modern and roomy. Well, you might have done it, but you decide to do it all on your own, partly because you do not want to pay the interior designer and partly because you really want to do it by yourself.

So you go furniture shopping and in the first shop you spot a sofa. Not just a sofa, but the sofa: it is a huge dark blue leather sofa and you fall in love with it. You already imagine how comfortable it will be to lie on it in front of the TV, how you will spend your lazy evenings on it. The sofa turns out to be pricey, but you decide to buy it because after all you “live just once” and you believe you deserve the best sofa, because you have worked so hard. You even imagine how your friends will envy you when they see this huge dark blue leather sofa which is so soft to touch, so beautiful to look at and so comfy.

You buy this sofa and out of a sudden it turns out this sofa won’t fit into your elevator to get it to your apartment. Well, you don’t like it, but you pay extra to the delivery service to bring it to your floor. After all it is your dream sofa. It looks so perfect.

Then it turns out it can’t go through your door. The designer of this sofa who made it look so beautiful has created it in one piece with no parts except from pillows that could be detached. Perhaps the designer thought the sofa would be placed in a big house with big doorframes when he or she has created this beautiful sofa. “Stupid” designer did not consider that someone would want to place this sofa inside of an apartment with standard small doorframes.

You are upset but you decide to pay extra to disassemble the doorframe. Finally the sofa is inside your apartment. You have paid huge money to get it inside, but it is finally there. It is so beautiful and comfy, but unfortunately it literally takes most of your living room. When you saw this sofa you didn’t bother much to actually measure it. You were sure that this perfect sofa would fit. After all your new apartment looks so big, especially after the one you have rented.

So now you have your perfect huge sofa. Unfortunately it is so big that you can’t actually place it by the wall like you have planned because it will block the door. You place the sofa in the middle of the room.

Now you will have to forget about the big dining table around which you planned to gather your friends and family. Well, it is not a big deal. You will place them all on the sofa. It also looks like you won’t have enough place to fit a desk for your computer, but you are sure you will be fine to seat on the sofa while working.

You didn’t expect to spend so much on the sofa, plus the expenses on transportation and building crew that has disassembled your doorframe. So now you try to buy cheaper furniture: table into the kitchen, which you don’t actually like, but still buy, because it is on sale. Also you buy a bed that otherwise you won’t even consider, because it is really cheap. Well, it is called a compromise, isn’t it?

You look at your apartment, which is now filled with not really matching pieces of furniture. You try to be still optimistic about the choices you’ve made. After a few weeks in your new apartment you start regretting that you don’t have a desk for your computer. Your sofa is super comfortable to lie at, but not too comfortable to work at. So your dream to work from home goes right through the window. Also you are not able to host dinners for your family, as you wanted: there is just not much place left to put a table to seat four people around it.

After a few more weeks you don’t actually remember why you liked that sofa so much. And you start blaming it on the shop assistant, who sold you this sofa, on the designer who has created it, on your friend, who went furniture shopping with you and didn’t stop you from buying it. You blame everyone and everything around you, but not yourself.

I would compare this situation with the dating strategy of some singles. Let’s talk about male singles.

So many times we are contacted by gentlemen who in detail describe how their perfect match should look like: she has long blond hair, beautiful big blue eyes, long athletic slender legs, beautiful behind, plump lips and sexy laugh. And she has to be 15 years younger. Such gentlemen claim that they are just “too visual”, they value beauty too much. They want to marry once and forever, so they want their match to be the most beautiful girl in the world. Just like the gentleman who bought that sofa in our earlier example. He just wanted to have a perfect sofa, which he deserved with his hard work and years of being

“sofa-deprived”.

These gentlemen can give me lots of “reasons” why this or that girl is not beautiful or young enough for them. They will talk about her “not perfect” eyes, lips, legs, clothes style, etc.

In their mind the person with perfect looks by some secret unspoken agreement will fit perfectly into their life. She will have similar family values, life goals and priorities. She will even magically prefer the type of looks and personality of these gentlemen. In real life in the majority of cases such a lady “won’t even fit through the imaginary doorframes”.

Do I want to say that the sofa was not the right choice? Well, it was not the right choice for the apartment of the gentleman – for his true needs. That sofa might look perfect inside the big house or maybe hotel. Perhaps the designer had a hotel in mind when he has created it.

So often some gentlemen forget that they are looking for the perfect match that will actually fit into their exact scenario.

For example, a 42 years old gentleman can claim he feels attracted only to 25 years old and for sure he knows a guy who is 43 and who is married to someone who is 23, so for sure he can also expect to date someone who is 17 years younger. After all he wants to “marry just once” and he wants her to be “perfect”. This gentleman forgets that even if his friend is married to a much younger girl – that is his friend’s scenario, much different from his own. He also doesn’t know if his friend had to “rebuild his doorframes” and compromise on having a desk and a table just because he wanted to fit “the sofa”.

So often gentlemen put aside their true needs and wishes like gathering family around the kitchen table, having a desk to work from home, having enough place for a big Christmas tree, just because they want to have a big leather blue sofa. Why do they sacrifice other dreams and needs because of the sofa? Nobody knows.

Be careful with what you wish and don’t forget to look at the bigger picture! And pretty often it is a really good idea to hire a professional.