I’m looking for a woman who will challenge me. A woman who isn’t afraid to argue, as long as it’s not about sports, politics, or pop culture. I want a woman who knows what she stands for and isn’t afraid to speak up, just not right before bed or first thing in the morning, or when I’m watching TV or trying to read. A woman who is guided by her heart and core values but never questions my habits or decisions — is that really too much to ask for?
The woman for me has to be confident enough to be herself. She’s someone who orders a cheeseburger for lunch without fretting about calories and feels as comfortable in sweatpants with her hair down as she does dressed for a night on the town, with no more than 21 percent body fat and a trust fund worth millions of dollars.
Nothing intrigues me more than a woman capable of holding a long conversation on literature or great artists that she’s not quite as familiar with as I am. Of course, I’m no elitist. I wouldn’t reject a woman just because she’s less interested in Infinite Jest than the Kardashians, as long as she bears a strong resemblance to Gal Gadot and compliments me constantly.
It’s a total cliché, but what I really want is an adventure partner. Someone with a hunger for new experiences who makes going to the grocery store feel like an escapade on par with burning down that haunted house across town that had the audacity to ban me when all I did was point out to a few people in line that you could tell the rubber bats hanging in the entryway were fake because they didn’t have genitals.
To me, true love means loving someone for his or her faults, not despite them. When I find a woman who doesn’t mind if I prefer ratty old sneakers to dress shoes or gets bent out of shape if I lose her dog in a bet, then I’ll know it’s real. Bonus points if she doesn’t judge me when I tell her the bet was over whether I could throw a three-pointer one-handed and blindfolded. And if she finds out that I lied about the bet and actually traded her dog for a tattoo of a Clydesdale smoking marijuana in a hot tub, and doesn’t freak out? I’ll ask her to marry me on the spot.
I want a woman who is capable of juggling work and family and three chainsaws while standing on one foot singing a medley of all my favorite songs, in case the power goes out and I get bored because I can’t go online.
Maybe the reason I can’t meet someone is that I’m too nice. But I can’t help it, nothing matters to me more than a woman’s happiness. When I see a woman who looks sad, I’ll go out of my way to make her smile. The other day at work I saw a woman who looked totally depressed, so I started dancing and singing silly songs to cheer her up. My boss got really bent out of shape and told me to stick to digging graves and leave the visitor’s alone. She looked so upset that I started dancing and singing silly songs to cheer her up, too. She fired me, but she was smiling when she did it. Mission accomplished, but I slept alone again that night.
My brother told me he knew his wife was the woman he wanted to spend his life with because she said she believed in his dreams. But I can’t imagine being with a woman who actually thinks that Stan Lee appears in my apartment three or four times a week and pays me fifty dollars to read him the newspaper while he takes a bath without at least asking what he’s like in person or why I never wake her up to say hello. Also, I don’t even have a bathtub; she’s not supposed to point that out? Does she think he brings the bathtub with him? The man’s 94 years old, for christ’s sake!
I was in love once. Everything was going great until I told her I wanted to write a memoir about eating a hot dog from every vendor in New York City and she wrote me a check for forty thousand dollars so I could fly out first class and stay in the Royal Suite at the Four Seasons while I ate my way across town. On the plane I read an article about competitive sandcastle building, and when I landed I called her and said I wanted to try to become the world champion at that, instead. She sent me a first class ticket home, and by the time I arrived she had the backyard converted into a sand pit so I could start training. She even had all these books about sandcastle building, and she’d highlighted some passages she said were particularly pertinent.
A week later she got real upset when I told her I wasn’t into sandcastles anymore and wanted to give the hot dog idea another shot. She complained that I never finish anything, and that I was ungrateful and self-centered. That really got me thinking about how maybe the reason I’m so particular about what I expect from others might be to stop myself from ever having to get too close to someone, because I’m afraid if I do they’ll discover that I’m no prize.
I knew right then that I needed to break up with her. I want a woman who will challenge me, not shake the very foundation of my being. And anyway, she wasn’t even blonde.