I, too have been intrigued by this thread (yeah, I know, some of you will not find this surprising...)

I fully expect that I will find and/or be found by a wonderful partner. I'm 40, mom to a most amazing 14 year-old son, cute as a button, and modest to boot! LOL I live in America just outside of Washington, DC.

I find that because I have had a tendency to dive headlong into a relationship (I'm doing my best to rid myself of this particular addiction) that I tend to burn through from one side of a relationship to the other in very short order. It also means I have a tendency to crash hard.

BUT I usually get back up, dust myself off and look at what I've learned from the experience. I always extract something good out of every situation, no matter how miserable. In fact, sometimes the more onerous the situation (shall I start a thread about people discovering their spouse is gay?) the more I am forced to learn and grow.

In recent years I've made friends with more than a couple of people who are avid fans of folk music and who are coupled with someone who does not share their enthusiasm. I've decided that if there are two things I absolutely must share with my future loving partner, they are a deep, abiding love of both music and people.

That being said, I love Kendall's "formula" for assessing the suitability of a prospective partner. Sounds like a perfectly good set of criteria to me!

I've met many people through various forms of "personals" -- and one does learn to translate what people say. How they say it, the care taken to spell things correctly (or not), the choice of subject matter -- all convey messages.

I'd like to think of myself as "non-judgemental" but it's simply not true. We all have our filters, we all categorize everything all the time, otherwise we'd never be able to get out of bed in the morning. The stimuli would overwhelm us regularly. But I think I've modified which criteria I need to pay attention to in order to narrow down the options. There are preferences and there are "must haves" and "can't stands". I think it's important for each of us to know which are which for ourselves.

And honesty remains the "best policy". As mentioned above, no honesty, no trust, no foundation for future trust. Men seem to be more likely to lie about their NAMES in my experience. This is a deal-breaker for me.

Anyway, it's waaayyyyy too late to be up writing theses on dating or whatever one wants to call it. Thanks for the opportunity once again to share my views and opinions on a miscellaneous topic of much interest.

{{{{{{{{{{{MUDCATTERS}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}

I still say we should have a Mudcat dating service...

Peace,

JudyO