Hmm, my experience has made me very leery of any sort of an ideal. All the girls that I've really liked have been so different, so here goes what I might be looking for in a girl...
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1) Honest.
This is a huge deal for me. Playing mind games with someone who I love will just drive me insane. I'll prefer blunt honesty and yelling, even pure argumentativeness, over passive-aggressiveness virtually every day of the week.
2) Sensitive.
Not necessarily excessively so, though I don't mind very emotional girls either. Being able to show some sort of weakness or vulnerability, or at least an understanding of weakness in others is nice. But I'll like to be with a human, not an android.
3) Feminity
Nothing too specific, just a bit of girlishness.
4) Talented
In something. This varies greatly, but I'm a skilled writer and like my girl to match me in some way.
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My difficulty with an ideal is that it serves essentially as a kind of straitjacket to yourself. It can easily become an enabler to keep yourself alone, rather than put in an effort to learn about different people and their beauties. This has a lot to do with my belief that relationships and happiness is not fundamentally a matter of fate, but a matter of choice between two individuals. There's something wonderful about anyone.
I mean, just trying to find common ground among the girls that I have loved is difficult...
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C - C was, in many ways, your typical snobbish socialite; a popular girl at high school with an eye for fashion and disparaging the styles of others. However, she was very intelligent with a definite skill at acting and drama. I loved her for our shared intellectual vanity, piqued by both her strength and feminity, adored how she could challenge me verbally on an equal level, and the fact that she was attractive certainly helped.
J - J was a, well, ditzy cheerleader with insanely strong emotions. She was so stereotypically feminine in almost everything that she seemed virtually an archetype: she would cry at the thought of small animals being hurt, other people feeling bad, or a broken nail; thought the color pink was the best thing ever; and the best way to her heart was to appeal to her sense of compassion. I rejected her then, because I thought that she was ditzy, only to regret it these days when I realize that just having someone who cared deeply for me and been there for me would have more than made up for all the "I feel bad for all the poor little cowsies and horsies" she could ever say.
B - B was a tiny(5') Australian stage ballerina from a very formalized traditional education consisting of tutors who trained her in etiquette, piano, French and ballet. She was groomed, essentially, to be a lady in the old way of things. Her physical artform captivated me, and her mannerism and sheer delicacy triggered a powerful protective instinct. She was not conventionally attractive at her small stature and build, but I promptly began to find her beautiful.
L - L was an incredibly hardworking publishing major, who was recovering from the death of her parents. I found myself swiftly admiring the way that at 19, she was not only keeping up with her college, but also taking care of a younger brother and her family's mansion. She was clearly unattractive, but I loved her in spite of it.
***
The only thing that I can find in common with them was that they all had some talent and were feminine. I couldn't make much of an ideal mate from that, and feel that most of my attempts to find an ideal to be less of myself, and more of an attempt to fit in with society. For example, I rejected J because I thought my friends would lampoon me for hanging out with a ditzy cheerleader. Likewise, I ended up allowing my relationship with L to deteriorate because I thought my friends would lampoon me for hanging out with an well-rounded, unattractive girl.
And in both cases, it was my loss at the end, since I didn't focus on what would make /me/ happy, and tried to satisfy others.
Qui said:
Although on the brighter side, I do know a few guys who are exactly what you described. My best friend is like that. I would never date him because I don't want anything to get between our friendship, but he's such a great guy, he really is just what you described. The problem for guys like that is that girls tend to take advantage of them. That pretty much sucks...
But good luck finding your boy
Holy, that's exactly why I always end up as the best friend. That is /not/ a good position to be in, though they're many ways to see it. But ultimately, I think that quite often, I find myself just hanging out in the inexhorably slim hope that the girl might notice me. I have to say that "I don't want anything to risk our friendship" line tends to irritate me since that's definitely something I've heard of more than twice or thrice. I mean, its all great that the girl's getting what she's wanting out of the relationship, and its excellent that she doesn't want to lose that, but the guy isn't getting what he wants from said relationship(which for me, is often as simple as a sense of acknowledgment that I /could/ be accepted), and staying in it becomes painful after awhile. I mean, rationally, it means that if we're not getting what we want from a "friendship", we really shouldn't keep offering it. Happiness is our own responsibility and all that.
But if you think about what the last line means, it also essentially says that nice guys like me shouldn't be nice. That offering unconditoinal support without asking for anything in return is essentially unhealthy for ourselves emotionally. I can appreciate standing up for yourself and all that, but any philosophy that ultimately says that being nice is wrong can't help but rub me the wrong way.
