Tuesday 25 November 2008

Sam: Christmas Shopping List

With Christmas almost upon us it got me thinking about shopping lists – of the relationship kind. One of the things that I get all my clients to do is come up with their ‘relationship shopping list’ – these are the non-negotiable characteristics that their partner must have. As you can imagine, there is some prioritisation that is involved. Here are some samples from one of my female clients that ran to over 25 items

  • Over six foot
  • Built like a fridge/freezer
  • Huge weiner 
  • Oxford/Cambridge and/ or Ivy league education
  • Ability to get in a physical fight and win
  • Likes spooning
  • Not cheap. Duh.

Etc etc.

I force people to focus and prioritise – to get down to their top three non-negotiables. Though many women have a super huge shopping list, I’m always surprised at the number of people who have not even really considered this – particularly men. They really need to sit down and think about it. But this is crucially important, you wouldn’t buy a Playstation 3 if you wanted to play Halo and Gears of War! Personally my non-negotiable three are loving, sexy and trustworthy.

What about yours? But strictly only your top 3!

15 comments:

Unknown said...

I've grown up as a Christian, which seriously limits the field as it is, so my list was always very short!

1) Similar beliefs
2) Non-smoker
3) Nice.

That's all I ever needed. Of course, there have been plenty of people who've met the above standards that I've nonetheless not been interested in, but attraction isn't generated by checklist anyway.

Emily said...

1 loving
2 curious
3 supportive

Carnalis said...

1. likes my kids
2. likes me
3. tolerates a noisy house

Anonymous said...

1 - Attentive
2 - Hooters to make every other chap jealously stare
3 - Girlishly silly

Anonymous said...

1 - supportive
2 - open minded
3 - yummy

Victoria said...

I think I really only have two. First, he must be intelligent so that I can always have interesting conversations with him. Second, he must be kind -- to me, himself and to others. Everything else that I like in a man generally seems to follow if those two conditions are met.

Anonymous said...

1 - Loveable
2 - Lovely
3 - Loving

Now, if only it were that simple...

Lily Lane said...

1. Good intelligence of a different kind to mine.
2. Caring
3. Spirited

thene said...

1. Geeky.
2. Relatively stable, rational and/or calm.
3. Openminded about sex.

Anonymous said...

- Hot. To me. I don't care what other people think. But I've been in relationships with people who were perfect in every way but in that I didn't want to bone them, and that just sucked.

- Smart. And I don't just mean in the "can come up with the square root of any number" way. I mean, fundementally, that I find their views interesting, well-considered and worthy of respect. And that, y'know, I have confidence in them to deal with their shit and I wouldn't object to or disregard their opinions on my shit.

- Not Mad. Which covers a million ills, of course, so let's try to specify. Not liable to randomly freak out. Unlikely to consider suicide except in extreme circumstances which are unlikely to occur. Unlikely to a) vanish, b) appear at all hours, c) claim to be a giraffe. Neither insanely clingy, nor likely to view 24 hours together as evidence We'll Be Trapped Together Forever.

Of course, there's other stuff, like not finding me boring, sex-obsessed, frigid, adrenaline-addicted, interested in stuff that bores the shit out of her, etc. But most of that falls under "matches her shopping list too" rather than anything else.

Anonymous said...

1. Sense of humour. For the love of god, give me someone I can be silly with and who can be silly with me.

2. Sexy.

3. Open-minded. And I don't just mean about sex - I mean in general. Someone with curiosity and a lively mind.

Give me those three things and I'm a happy person.

Anonymous said...

That Something - bit of a cop out but no two girls I've been out with have ever looked alike or acted alike. I've never been able to answer the question 'whats my type'and hope that I never can.
Nice Ass - I've almost crashed my car for a nice ass on more the one occasion.
Not Mental - this means calm, kind and not likely to steal my car and try and kill herself like one girlfriend I had.

Anonymous said...

1) Shorter than me

2) Bearded

3) Vegetarian

- were NEVER on my list, but just go to show the unpredictable nature of love.

Anonymous said...

(1) Sexy
(2) Well mannered
(3) Gives me space

Anonymous said...

1. confident
2. smart (can be either street or book, most important being common sense)
3. sweet (even if its only to me)