Relationships: Romantic or otherwise...

I had to spend a lot of time thinking about how best to write this posting as I don’t want to come across as being too judgmental or hyper-critical. The filters that I tend to use when evaluating people as romantic partners tend to consist of the following: I have to be attracted to them physically and mentally; I have to be able to spend a lot of time with them; I have to have a reasonable amount of physical contact on a regular basis; and I have to be able to envision a future with this person. There is a point of clarification I want to make about those previous items. By attractiveness, I do not mean the typical physical beauty. I mean that my body must be chemically or emotionally stimulated by the person. There is some degree of physical beauty that factors in, as there always is, but I often feel the need to clarify the difference in my perspective between attractiveness and physical beauty. Reading Duck’s theory did make sense, although there were points that I felt it was a bit broad sweeping in its descriptions. I had to take some time to think about it applying to all relationships, rather than the friendships or romantic relationships, before this started to make more sense. I would find it hard to believe that someone has not eliminated someone based upon a sociological or pre-interaction cue and then reconsider them. This is part of human nature. We all pre-judge to some degree and those judgments color our perspectives whether this is done on a conscious or a sub-conscious level.