Nobody is "picking" love
I'm perpetually perplexed by dating/relationship/marriage advice that revolves around the idea of “picking someone that… “
I don't know about you guys, but when I fell in love with my now-wife, I fell. There was nothing voluntary or deliberate about it. Despite not knowing all that much about how she handled conflict, what kind of life or how she thought about having kids, I had no choice but to want to be with her. “Picking” didn't come into the picture.
Of course, deliberately dating many several different people has its place. And of course, paying attention to the traits and querks of those candidates makes sense. But chances are that before you know it, you will find a particular person especially attractive — and whatever you learned about their character is probably not that relevant anymore.
I think this is the major error in that kind of advice: You're expected to choose at a stage where all the important decisions are made by your biochemistry.
There is a difference between falling for someone — being attracted to them, wanting to start a relationship — and being in a long-term relationship.
When you're in the first stage, you're not really choosing. In my experience, being madly in love makes it almost impossible to still be interested in dating other people.
When you're in the second stage, you might have recovered your brain's executive funcions enough to actually think about what you want in a relationship — but the choosing is over. The only yes-or-no decision left to make is whether you stay or leave.
What do you think?
