The problem is, I've fudged on this stuff before, and always regretted it. In the end, it has to come down to no kids, no drugs, no alcohol. Everything else is negotiable.

I took the old profile down and replaced it with one that's only a few lines long. I don't know if it will make any difference, but I've heard the "intimidating and complicated" allegations often enough to think maybe you have a point.

If not, I can always put the old profile back up!

I wasn't criticizing you and my statement was not meant in judgment in any way - just trying to wrap my mind around your thinking. I agree that a person;s preferences are important. But I still tend to have silly romantic notions about "lovebeingenough" that get me in trouble now & then.

I tend to agree about booze -tho I will sip a little sake or share wine at a holiday dinner, I have seen close up and comfy the damage it does - it had ruined my family....twice. That's 2 times too many...

No, I didn't take it as criticism, I was just trying to explain my position.

You know, I see so many profiles where people have set up some amazing deal-breakers and preferences (my favorite was a woman who only wanted a guy 26-28), and, while I often don't understand them, the reality is that I don't NEED to. They're not my standards, they're somebody else's, and I don't have the knowledge or background to say anything particularly relevant about them.

But I've lost a LOT of people, people I loved, to drugs and alcohol. If I could live in a world without drugs and alcohol, I'd go there in a fraction of a second. I don't want them in my life, and I'm not going to get involved with someone who is going to bring them back into my life.

As for the kid thing, that's just experience and a lot of thinking. The whole parental mindset is anathema to me; I can no more understand someone deliberately wanting to be a parent than I could understand someone diving naked into a pit of perturbed crocodiles. It makes no sense to me. Maybe I'm missing a chromosome or something.

So, in the end, that's a total of 3 deal-breakers. Not that many, really. Lots of people have many many more than I do. The only real difference, I suppose, is that mine preclude people who live as society expects them to. Maybe "demands" would be a better word.

And, sadly, there just aren't many people who are willing or able to do that. Most people just follow the script, whether it makes any sense for them or not. To be honest, I wouldn't want to end up with someone like that anyway. I've been through enough of them to know how poorly that mindset meshes with mine.

well Lex at least you know what you want. That is a step ahead of many of us. I have lost friends to drugs, alcohol, war, prison, and mental illness, so I don;t like ANY of those things...so having a guy I'm dating prefer the cute blonde in the corner is nothing to me....lots worse has happened.

I say w/e - he deserves to be happy as do I. If two people are happy together, well, life is all about that in my opinion.

What I really think is that we all have "hidden dealbreakers" that we don;t know are there until confronted by them....

But three out of seven billion? I think that's even worse than the odds of winning the lottery!

This is the argument I really love -- they call childfree people selfish, and then they say "Don't you want someone to look after you when you get old?" So basically, the whole point in having kids is so there's a built-in nursing staff down the road. That's certainly not selfish.

I see it this way: my books are my kids. And I will never have to change their diapers, or send them to college, or sit and listen while they tell me I just don't understand. I'll take creating over procreating any day of the week....

The world doesn't need more people. It needs for a whole helluva lot of the existing people to understand that it doesn't need more people.

I get that, but I don't want my standard to be "lots worse has happened." Just strikes me as settling, as defeatist. I've done that; it didn't work. I don't want to do that anymore.



It took me a long time, dozens and dozens of bad relationships, for me to learn what I wanted, and what I didn't want. I didn't learn quickly. I had to make a billion horrible mistakes before anything started to sink in at all.

But at this point, I think I have my deal-breakers pretty well figured out. Sure, something else could arise in the future that would cause me to implement a new deal-breaker, but I'm not going to worry about that right now. It may never happen!

Well, technically, by younger I mean "without kids," which is confusing because "without kids" is not really a number.

But in my extensive studies of this issue, I have found that there is a sort of cutoff point, an age by which it seems every woman on every dating site already has kids (usually at least three of them, followed by the mandatory "AND THEY ARE MY WORLD," followed by all the terrible things she hopes will happen to you if you're not into her and her kids as the inevitable "package deal").

Unfortunately, that age seems to be about 16, which is not very helpful for most of us.

Alternatively, I can still hang onto the slim hope that there could be someone out there, of legal age, who has not yet had kids, for whatever reason (she's a nun, the lower half of her body was eaten by a shark, she was abducted by aliens and sterilized, etc.), but I think this is will only be possible to find in a younger person.

I would like to ask about the "yellow aura". What is that? I never noticed. Is it over 50 yo? I better check, because if that is the case I have one, too.

Lex, you really are a hoot. I don't know what the secret is. I am contacted by some as young as 20 years old. Gee, I have a son older than that. I do wish you luck.

I would like to ask about the "yellow aura". What is that? I never noticed. Is it over 50 yo? I better check, because if that is the case I have one, too.

haha.
it means they're on time out.

I just checked the profile and saw no pic with no shirt in a bathroom mirror. Just lettin you know. I liked the cel phone tho.

That was a parody of the typical MySpace bathroom pic. I used that one on the back cover of my 5th book, too.

gonna call discrimination on this one- no way could I post a shirtless bathroom mirror pic

even tho ese has requested I do so

I wouldn't do a shirtless pic if they paid me....they reek of desperation and possible illiteracy....

and an unworthy wardrobe

Sweets, the gal version is the shot from down a well. You dont have one btw.