Hey, Michelle,

Thank you so much for reading and responding.

I am very well aware that you are not a therapist or any kind of professional, I am just looking for other insights.

I don’t know if you got to the portion about my very candid discussions with a doctor guy from my country here who helped me a lot to see the light at the end of the tunnel in 2015 – well, as I wrote to Matt on that thread his first “go – no go” for a romance was based on how attractive he found the female based on looks (the “family portrait” assessment as you aptly put it). Which, I might add, is not surprising. I read in some interview a male therapist say that a man will never marry a woman who is physically undesirable for him, yet women make this mistake all the time. Hence a lot of marital problems because the guy is a good, decent guy by nature, but the pull, the physical attraction on the part of the woman is missing. Hence possible cheating and guilt complex – something along the lines of he is a good guy, totally worthy of love, yet I don’t love him… And like I wrote about my ex, when I look back, I can tell exactly what I was seeing in those men back then, only now I have changed and me today doesn’t see it now.

I guess what I am trying to say is that that doctor totally understood where I was coming from. Yet, when we had a friendly chat about my life half a year ago, he was surprised that I hadn’t found somebody already, after three and half years at that point. Well, I might add that he urged me to forget all about my ex when I was barely out of a relationship, and I am only too aware of rebound relationships, so that was a little bit premature on his part, I say, so certainly I am not taking everything that he said for granted, but still… Besides, after he was cheated upon, he married a girl who is 18 years younger…  Someone in my camp? 🙂 I am definitely not alone!

Now to your questions.

Michelle, you grouped them in four groups, but each of them contains a few questions in its turn. So I had to break my answers. I was not sure I could do a short and long version. I don’t think my answers are particularly long. Please let me know if this format worked. I think now that time has passed and I dumped everything out back then, I don’t have the urge to write A LOT. Sorry if I am being presumptuous.

Q1.  Do you have any close friends ( male or female ).

Yes.

For a long time, I had three close girlfriends, but the funny thing is that I would be sharing different things with them. Like, with one I could talk about my ambitions and travels, but with another it would be mostly about feelings.

Now I’d say I have two, one is one of those three (have been friends since 1997) and another one is a “newcomer” (even though we have been friends for over 15 years now).

Somehow I started to be more open about my love life with that old friend of mine, even though I don’t always feel the need to tell her everything.

Frankly, I never thought that we would be friends for such a long time – we are so different, but here we are still, 20+ years after high school. And funny enough, just like you say, when we meet or Skype, no matter how long it has been since our last conversation, it always feels as if we parted only yesterday still on the same wave length.

With the restaurant analogy, do you mean that I am looking for the chemistry (of whatever kind – no matter will other women fall for what I am falling for or not) and then being surprised that the man is not loving, supportive, etc.?

If you had to pick your top five things you wanted your long-term partner to be, what would they be in priority order?

Being able to trust him 100%. Like if I, God forbid, become disabled, he is by my side of his own will and not because he “must”. I know that my Dad is like that, but very few men are.

Being able to laugh at life’s mishaps, at oneself and not be deterred by it.

Be of comparable or of a higher level of education (or knowledge since one doesn’t have to have all sorts of degrees to be an interesting interlocutor).

I would say that 2. and 3. need to go hand in hand.

And being willing to see things from my perspective, put himself in my shoes is part of 1.

That is it.

Interesting question, by the way. You know, I have always been against checklists trusting that “gut feeling” – can I cuddle with him or not, does he feel like a “kindred spirit” or not. True, it hasn’t brought me very far yet, but if I don’t feel “it”, I can’t feign it or make myself feel it – oh well, here I go again. And I have a couple of male friends or very good acquaintances around who would fit those criteria and yet I don’t feel that I could see them as my boyfriends or husbands. Just reliable friends whose company I enjoy.

Q2.  What goals do you have for life outside finding a romantic relationship? Reason for this one, how much of a balanced, full life do you have outside of looking for a partner.

Again, and interesting question for the me who I am today.

I have a list of things or skills I would like to master in whatever time I have left. I still want to learn a couple of languages, learn to play the guitar, dance(with a partner) and many other things. And I am not looking to be perfect in all of them (with the exception of the languages, maybe). It seems that I bring all those skills I want to have to a certain level and when my inner something says “Good enough!”, I stop.

Now the interesting part.

When I looked deep into myself several years ago, it did seem that I was looking for a father figure. (Despite the fact that I have had rather serious crushes over men barely 5 or 7 years older.)

Then I came across the following advice: try and imagine what your crush would be adding to your life and try and get it myself.

I typically persevere if I set myself a goal. I am also good at imagining what I would feel like under these or those circumstances, in this or that environment.

Just like with that guy whom I am finally getting over (hey, I don’t feel the urge to check his Twitter account every day now!), I very quickly summarised that I wanted to travel with him and wanted to be heard and accepted just like I was.

Travelling was easy. Now that I come to think about it, I am really blessed to be a female living in the 21st century. I am not attracted by exotics, I am totally fine with Europe and the Americas, have a list of places that I am slowly but surely visiting. But I am digressing.

Regarding being heard and accepted, maybe the fact that I was not longer in a relationship with a married man, maybe the fact that I now cared less than ever, but I guess I became more open, having nothing to hide. And now I physically feel support and goodness coming from different people to me. You know, just like somebody said that love comes in all shapes and forms – a smile from a friendly-looking person in a store on a gloomy day is also love. Or developing friendships with ladies of my mother’s age whom I truly admire and can learn a lot from.

In short, I trust the world much more now (so don’t need my now ex to protect me and shield me) and stand much more firmly on my two feet.

Career advance and change in my immigration status definitely are part of it, too.

But I would sure love to travel, do horseback riding, go sailing, shooting, attend matches and learning the rules of the different games, try new cuisines, finally learn to cook with somebody very special.

You do clearly get very over-invested, over-attached very quickly, needing very little to go on to conjure up a whole imagined exciting potential world. Take your current experience, a lot of very small occurrences, all could be as easily explained away as they can be built up into something exciting in your head. I’m not surprised given it will feel exciting after not feeling any interest for a while which is why I’m curious about what else excites you, grabs you attention and makes you feel alive outside a romantic relationship possibility.

Yes, this can be easily explained by that.

But at the same time, I sometimes feel that magnetic animal pull towards men whom I physically don’t like. I even know that they are definitely not a good match because of their qualities, yet I feel the pull. Naturally, I find it very easy to resist because there is nothing more to it, but the raw sexual attraction that doesn’t stand to reason at all.

However, just like with those men who pass the “family portrait” assessment, I always tell myself, “Let’s see what I will be feeling when I see him in two days.” More often that not, I feel nothing, that is how I know that it what just it – animal instinct to procreate, but not something to follow through on.

Q3.  Relationship with parents.

Aware you/Anita started on this one and this isn’t my area so I’ll only ask what I can understand and this is something you might want want to pick up with one of those free online therapy/counselling websites you can find.  Given you were attention-starved in your family life, it is not impossible this is why you tend to look to older men for hugs, attention, recognition that you exist/are important/valued and why one of your criteria is the family portrait assessment. 

Part of what I would say here can be found in my answers above. I’ll only repeat myself that I can always find a few exceptions to any generically-sounding statement that would fit perfectly if it was not for those instances-exceptions.

What is the relationship with your mum & dad like now. Do you feel you are independent of them, is there much contact?

Yes, I feel that I am independent.

But there is that small tinge of wanting to break the news to her that I have found my ideal man. And he would be so and so, so that she can gasp. And so that I can say – “See, no matter how often you would exclaim in mock despair, “And who is going to marry you like this?”, I still found him, you would want him for yourself and he adores me.” And I wouldn’t tell her until I am married and it is final. But wait, don’t divorces happen, too?…

(Something akin to my wishing for my ex to divorce, so I can tell him that it is he who is inadequate, who falls out of love no matter how gorgeous the woman is and so that I am vindicated and can feel right about my diagnosis that he is a narc.)

I think my mother now wants to pursue the strategy of being my friend – possibly so that I would share things with her that one normally shares with one’s girlfriends.

But I am very wary of it. On the one hand, I am not used to sharing such personal things with her; on the other, in the past (especially when I was with my ex, whom she obviously hated), she would sneakily ask something in a matter-of-fact manner and then, later on, use the same information in a snide remark against me.

So I share things so that she is satisfied, but doesn’t know what I truly have inside. Like I would share how a few dates went, but those would be dates with those I don’t care about. I am not going to share about anything that might not turn out the way I want it to.

But there is regular contact. I always feel as if my mother wants me to be on a short leash. I do my best to make her get used to, say, me dropping an email only once a week. She, of course, would rather get emails from me every single day. She says that she, as a mother, naturally needs to know that I am alive and well every day (besides, I don’t have a partner who would know that something is wrong if he doesn’t hear from me every day). But I just can’t stand it. Though I do understand it. I am not a mother.

With my Dad, it is now much more caring on my side, maybe due to the fact that he will be 75 in two years. I now appreciate more than ever that he exerts a steadying influence on my mother, that he lets me make my own mistakes, doesn’t ask questions and if he has something to say, he clearly states that that is his personal opinion.

With my mother, as she gets older, she now believes that she has lived long enough to know literally everything. Something like, “I have lived for about 60 years now, believe me I KNOW. If I say so, it is so.” No humility whatsoever.

And last one for now Q4 – a slightly personal question, to be ignored if uncomfortable sharing here. Would you say you are comfortable/confident with sex, enjoy it, know how to ask for what you like etc? 

Yes, I believe so. Mostly, my sexual experience was with my ex of six years (I am not sure I should count petting with my #1 and 2 as I call them). It was amazing. And it is one more reason for me believing him to be a covert narcissist. They say that it is ever so hard to break away from narcs because sex with them is so wonderful, they surely know how to please a partner in bed.

“Fifty Shades” was not yet published, but we already were doing it in bed, on the floor, on the kitchen counter, in a car – you name it.

I suggested lots of things, too. Such as taking shower and bath together. He said he felt uncomfortable as he had never done it before, but went for it and we did it multiple times.

From reading through it seems you have limited physical experience, which might go some way to explaining why your pre-selection criteria are highly focused on this area of attraction, since it is the area you know least about so far and hence why it excites you so much more than other criteria.  How were your teenage years, first kiss/fumble etc, did you date much back then at all, even if you don’t count them among your experiences here? Take care, look forwards to hearing what you think. Long & short version…!

I didn’t date at all until I had that tremendous crush on my #1 when I was 23 and already a graduate student.

I had had a few crushes before that, mostly on male middle-aged teachers, but one of them was on my dancing teacher (I was 19, he was 25) and on an Arab man in his mid-20s when in Egypt (I was 18). Actually, the Arab was the one who was the first man ever to ask me out on a date. I was on vacation with my father and my father let me go (I knew how worried he was, so I respect him ever more so for that). We spent a few beautiful hours on the beach, but I didn’t want to kiss him because I knew that it was not going anywhere even though it was a very nice date. I am normally not the one who takes chances. It is as if I consisted of two levels – emotional and intelligent. If the intelligent doesn’t give a green light, it is relatively easy to quell the emotional portion. A couple of weeks of daydreaming and that is it. But if the intelligent gives a go…

One of the four most recent crushes, just before the guy who seriously led me on, was only 7 years older. I couldn’t shake him off for nearly three months. The guy “who led me on” helped a lot, but then I couldn’t get over him for at least two years, you could say three in turn – if you don’t count really minor crushes passing in a couple of weeks in year 3.

If I had to choose among those five love languages (even though all are important if one is watching carefully, aren’t they?), I would say that mine is quality time combined with physical touch. I don’t let acts of service go unnoticed, do value gifts; words are cheap but women fall in love with their ears.

Also, in life in general, what I naturally pay special attention to is the ambiance, how I feel in that particular environment, by what I am “enveloped” so to speak. My litmus test is how I would feel in somebody’s arms, head on his shoulder. If I can imagine that, if my body accepts his – then I can fall in love. More often than not, I shudder at the thought though.

Please let me know if the way I am answering is all right. I am really thinking as I type, and it would really mean an extra effort to condense the answers further. At the same time, I have that nice feeling that I have nothing to add besides what I have written – pure bliss! 🙂

Take care you too and thanks again!