How to Find the Perfect* Woman

I enjoy internet hyperbole so I thought I’d share some random advice. Please note that my preliminary advice to my actual advice is to be weary of advice from successful people because they often forget to mention how much luck or divine intervention had to do with their actual achievement.

I’m pretty damn lucky.

So here’s the advice I shared with a young man bemoaning the current dating world and finding true love. Introduce to parents, split a mortgage, parent teacher conference date night type love.

This young man has a numbers related career so I provided him with a numbers game.

There’s an ideal person we have in our head that we hope to randomly meet one day in the random places we visit. We hope this person shows up as their true, authentic selves when we meet them and hope they want the same things from us.

Big hope here.

You dance around the numbers by visiting places where there are people looking for other people and you spruce yourself up to make yourself more desirable so you can be chosen as much as you do the choosing.

If you’re chosen you then have to unlock door after door to see if a) they are who they say they are and b) they want what you want.

This is true in the digital world and the real world.

Sorry, additional caveat lector (I learned something new today): even if you find the perfect person AND you are a perfect person there will still be work because relationships are communication and sacrifice and effort because duh.

Anyway, all of this shopping and you are hoping you’re making good choices on your own.

Now here’s where my wife doesn’t love my metaphoric relationship but men are a simple folk.

When men shop for things we care about we go to the experts. Cars, TVs, health care, vacation spots, restaurants. We find the folks who’ve already vetted and educated themselves on all of the options so we can find the people who match our profile. Then we buy what they buy, go where they go, live how they live.

Simple folk are we.

And when men are down the rabbit hole that is a four-door sedan comment thread on Reddit, we discover the overwhelming upvotes sit with the owners of multiple vehicles. The sage advisors know from experience, not random blurbs or corporate branding.

The experts know.

So here’s where my advice lies.

The people with knowledge about all of the women you might want to meet are, you guessed it, women.

Women know women and women know women.

First, women simply know more women than you could ever imagine knowing if you are an average man. Every woman’s phones has 20 women in it that you would love to meet. Friend, coworker, yoga instructor, college teammate, landlord, lawyer, cousin, notary, parking lot attendant.

Men are not complicated.

But the more important detail is that women know which of those 20 women would be a good fit for you. The friend zone is only a lonely place if that friend isn’t actively scouting other potential players for you.

This next part is where this advice loses traction for women looking for the perfect man.

Men don’t know men.

We know a lot of men but we only really know a couple of men.

A man might be best friends with a man and not know that the man is having a tough time at work or having a major operation or has a wife and two kids. Men can be best friends and only know that their friend’s NCAA picks are always trash because they believe in mid-majors post-NIL but their fantasy football team is unstoppable because they’re drafting algorithm is based on positional scarcity.

Men don’t know men.

But women know women.

Women can tell you another woman’s relationship status by her earrings.

A woman will have a solid opinion on which friends are looking to mate for life or for the weekend. A woman will know which friends are good at long distance relationships or need codependency from the second date.

Now, this doesn’t mean that one woman should be your matchmaker. You will be better off with a panel interview process. A few opinions are helpful to avoid blind spots in decision making.

This may not be the romantic advice from the Hallmark Channel 9PM Friday movie but men don’t know what that means.

And the women who know women can be any women. Age, income, relationship status, sexuality, whatever. Those three lesbian aunties from church know the middle names of more straight women than you’ll ever talk to.

So there’s the rub. Church, work, gym, coffee shop - third place social groups where you can befriend women. Real friends. Join those groups either hope of making friends, not meeting your ideal woman. Be you and be vulnerable so they get to know you as much as they know the women in their contacts.

Enjoy the social space for the social space so your connections aren’t tainted by your additional motive. If you like books, then read with women. Garden with women. Woodwork with women. Learn with women.

And be honest with women that you are looking for the right women but not there, in that social space because false pretense will not help them help you. You want all of their contacts working for you and not a relationship at home base that could fizzle and ruin that space for everyone.

Women friends aren’t better than men friends they just provide a different support system. And you will need to be supportive in return.

I’ve watched men without women in their life struggle with managing the woman in their life. Those relationships feel transactional because after desire, romance, safety and finance, there’s no connection. I know I am a better husband because learned from my friends how their man’s actions affected them - positively or negatively.

Again, this advice isn’t as helpful to find a man because men have a lot of walls that make finding who they actually are difficult. This is why the old stereotype of “women know when you’re going to have sex and men know when you’re going to get married” feels true.

And women are more romantic so they will collectively pull together make sure you don’t ruin it by being a man. You will become their project and they won’t stop until you are both happy. Aunties and Uncles check-in but Aunties have to-do list.

Men have a binary selection criteria for their women friends. Is he a good guy ready for a relationship or is he presently not ready for anything stable? This is availability not matchmaking.

Women are better and we should just enjoy letting them lead.

I was lucky enough for this advice to have worked for me. I went to college in Atlanta in 90’s. I wanted an education and I was hoping to meet my ideal woman.

After failing on my own repeatedly, a friend pointed out someone who I noticed in class but wouldn’t have guessed was perfect. Then all of my friends who knew her said the same thing. When we finally went out we realized all of these friends knew better than we knew ourselves. Thirty years and three kids later they’re still right.

All of those friends went to Spelman and almost all of them had boyfriends. We were just in class together at Georgia Tech. They knew me enough to know my goods, my bads, my likes and dislikes.

Those friends were also in no rush to introduce me to their friends the first two years they knew me because my interests in meeting someone ideal were not as interesting as me just enjoying Atlanta. Once my actions matched my words, they kept their eyes open for the right person.

And that was that.

We still had to do the work and be lucky in so many ways, but those women knew the woman I needed and they made sure I didn’t fuck it up.

So make some friends first. Enjoy the friend zone. They’ll know what to do next.

Good things.

• what you think of as ideal may be a good start, but you’re Aunties and sisters and cousins and co-workers and dental hygienist know what’s really good for you so let them help you decide what perfect is