Dear XenopusTex:

I will take on the comparison between zeroing in a rifle and selecting a woman for a relationship best I understand it: your brain is like your rifle; your rational and emotional intelligence is like the bullet, the firing power. Holding the rifle steadily is the calmness you need when evaluating a woman, you take your time and not rush it. You focus on the target as you focus on the woman.

The zeroing in process with a rifle takes less than a minute or otherwise a very short time. On the other hand, evaluating a woman will take months. When you are about to shoot a rabbit for food, you don’t pet it first and give it a name, spending time with it and getting attached to it. In a similar way, you don’t get overly attached to a woman before you evaluate her. (This is a mistake many make and once attached, their … focus is off, their sight is clouded with old needs, old fears, wishful thinking and dysfunction).

All the questions you listed in your second paragraph above are parts of the months long evaluation process. You only had lunch with her once, this is too short of a time. It is just enough time for you to come up with all these questions (good job!) and so you started the process of evaluation, comparable to a second of two of handling the rifle, just bringing it toward a position toward zeroing, the beginning.

You ask these questions, one at a time and listen for her answers. You learn who she is, how she thinks, how she behaves in different situations (you saw her so far in two situations: at lunch where she was bright eyed and bushy tailed and at work when she looked stressed), over time.

How am I doing with the comparison so far and is it helpful?

anita