Another writer here at DailyXY recently posted a column about the five types of crazy girlfriends a fella should run screaming from: the one with the really close guy friend (sure), the sex-crazed one, the crazy-crazed one, et cetera.
Before I met my fiancée, I dated them all — and specimens even worse. Where was this column when I was 20?
Older and hopefully less stupid, I have finally, through dumb luck and some hard-earned wisdom, ended up with one of the good ones. Yes, you want beauty, brains and body; but it’s important to get the character stuff right, too.
Some auspicious signs:
• She listens as eagerly as she talks.
• After the dust settles from an argument, she tries not to repeat doing that thing you hated.
• She might be a party girl some of the time. Notwithstanding my colleague’s column, it’s even fun (for example, she might be the kind of girl who quite recently tried to step into a cop car on a Saturday night, thinking it was a taxi — ahem). You’re fine as long as she walks in a straight line most of the time.
• She’s trustworthy. A woman who will polish off your best Scotch without asking will also clean out your bank account. Trust me.
• She has a solid plan in life — a career, or has prospects for one. Women are trained from girlhood to seek out men with a respected place in the world (at least once they’re older and past dating drummers). We don’t instill the same lesson in boys, and maybe we should. As of this week, my fiancée now earns more than me. Does this bother me? Hell no. I couldn’t be happier that she’s not still “figuring things out” like too many other 30-year-olds. Meanwhile, her making more money gets me closer to my dream of lounging on the couch with a box of bon bons and writing books about dead baseball players. My plan is coming together.
• She’s a capable household manager. My live-in CEO has gradually filled our townhouse with furniture in the midst of also scrimping for the wedding. She’s got this pioneer toughness in her. Once upon a time this might have meant we’d have enough preserves for winter. Nowadays we hold out for a bargain on Eames-style dining chairs.
• Her confidence can stand up in a moderate breeze. A woman with a rooted sense of self doesn’t often cry about a bad day at work, fret about her appearance overmuch or need your compliments just to get out the front door. (Mind you, she still has a woman’s insatiable hunger for compliments, as the great Homer observed — Homer Simpson, that is.)
Image courtesy of Brandon Christopher Warren on flickr
