Most people don’t look for love. They look for a person who matches the list they’ve already written in their head.
Something like:
Someone emotionally available, but not too intense. Ambitious, but not obsessed with work. Attractive, but not vain. Independent, but not distant. Deep, but, please, not complicated. Similar enough, yet different enough to feel interesting.
The list may sound reasonable. In fact, it’s often reasonable.
The problem starts when the list becomes your whole strategy. When love stops being an encounter and becomes a shopping trip.
You walk into the world, or more likely into an app, as if you were walking into a supermarket with a grocery list. You know what you want. You know what you don’t want. You filter, discard, compare, optimise.
You see… on paper, this looks intelligent. If you know what you need, why waste time with what you don’t?
Right?
Right…?
Here’s the problem: you don’t always know what you need before you meet the person who changes the question.
This doesn’t mean you should have no standards (please do). It doesn’t mean ignoring red flags (actual red flags, not tiktok irrational fantasy red flags), accepting a poor treatment, or calling chaos chemistry.
It means the desire you imagine in your head is not always the same as the desire you feel when a real person is in front of you.
You may believe you want someone highly extroverted, then feel unexpectedly at peace with someone reserved or shy. You may think you need someone who shares all your interests, then discover that what matters more is how they show support when you need it. You may be convinced that one trait is non-negotiable (think: I’m looking for a man in finance, trust fund, 6’5”, blue eyes, orrrrrrrrr, big boobs, blonde, 22, cooks, never complains, -10 body count), then realise it was never the trait itself you wanted, but the feeling you imagined it would give you.
A list can describe an idea. But it can’t predict a person.
And it definitely can’t predict who you’ll become in contact with that person. This is the most important part.
Dating apps have made it very easy to confuse information with knowledge. Height, job, hobbies, politics, music taste, travel habits, attachment style… you name it.
All of that may tell you something.
But it doesn’t tell you what happens when you sit across from someone and the conversation moves without effort. It doesn’t tell you whether their presence does mmmmm something in you. It doesn’t tell you whether disagreement feels like danger or just like two adults thinking together.
Love is not found by matching two fixed lists. That’s a fantasy. It’s built through contact, friction, surprise and time.
There’s a great book called Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned: The Myth of the Objective by Kenneth O. Stanley and Joel Lehman. Its argument has nothing to do with love. It’s about science, creativity, AI, social change and the strange fact that many important discoveries don’t happen because someone chased a precise goal in a straight line.
They happen becuase someone was moving, wandering, searching, experimenting, paying attention. They were aiming at something, yes. But they weren’t so blinded by the target that they missed what appeared on the way.
And this applies to love.
If you become too attached to the exact person you’ve imagined, you may fail to notice the real person in front of you.
They might not be wrong for you, but they certainly don’t match the fantasy version you created before you knew them.
Yep, this is the point.
You don’t need to throw away discernment, just your overly idealised list of requirements. You need to stop confusing control with clarity.
Clarity is good. It means knowing your values, your limits, your patterns, your capacity for intimacy and the kind of life you want to build. But control means trying to eliminate uncertainty before the encounter has even happened.
One helps you choose better, the other keeps you safe from being surprised by the uncertainty of life.
So if you’re looking for love, keep your standards. But be careful with the grocery list.
Because the person who fits your life may not look exactly like the person you planned or fantasised about.
And the life you’re trying to build won’t begin by finding the perfect match on paper. It begins by paying attention to what happens when you stop treating love like a search filter.
Love won’t be found in your tinder shopping cart.
If your list of oh-so-necessary requirements is making dating more rigid, exhausting and less like actually meeting someone human, you could…
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Love,
Noemi
