Whatever Floats Your Boat

Item: a recent article on yourtango.com described things that women wear that annoy men. Apparently single men don't like women who wear outfits that show excessive cleavage, because they're "slutty." Well, I beg to differ. Anyone who has been to a bar more than once knows that what you see isn't necessarily what you get.

Item: I was having lunch in a local sports bar and overheard a conversation between two of the waitresses. They were talking about what types of men they like, and the question arose: "What about chubby?" That this question would even be asked indicates that there's no obvious consensus. That brings me to the point of this article.

We all have our own preferences. Hopefully, we honor those preferences, as opposed to going after what we think we should have. When we deny our preferences in favor of the accepted norms, bad things happen. First, we approach potential partners who don't fit our preferences, but do fit the norms. When this happens, we lose, especially if the potential partners are also interested. Second, because we deny our own preferences, we implicitly deny that others have their own preferences, so we pass up potential partners who would be interested because we assume they wouldn't be, and we lose again.

So what's the answer? Take out your laundry list of qualities you're looking for in a partner, and examine each one to see if it reflects what you really want, or what you think you're supposed to have.