What to Look For in a Partner: The Criteria That Predict Something

15 Sep What to Look For in a Partner: The Criteria That Predict Something

Most people can describe what they want in a partner and most of those descriptions are close to useless. Kind, funny, intelligent, active, financially secure. Nobody is looking for the opposite, which means the list does no work.

The useful version is shorter, less flattering to write down, and mostly concerns things that are difficult to observe on a first meeting. It is also worth settling before you start, because criteria formed while you are already attached to someone are not criteria.

Separate the three categories

Almost every unhelpful list collapses three different kinds of thing into one.

Circumstances. Where they live, whether they have children at home, what their work demands, whether they are actually free to be in a relationship. These are facts, they are checkable in advance, and they end more promising situations than character ever does.

Character. How they behave under mild inconvenience, whether they can be disagreed with, whether they keep small commitments. Slow to assess and the most durable of the three.

Preferences. Height, profession, hobbies, taste. These feel like the most important because they are the easiest to specify. They are the least predictive of anything.

Most people over-specify the third category and under-specify the first, then wonder why the results are poor.

What actually matters, in rough order

They want the same thing on a similar timeline

This outranks everything. Two well-matched people who want different things will not be rescued by compatibility, and no amount of rapport resolves it.

It is also the item most often left unspoken for months, usually because raising it early feels forward. It is not. It is the most efficient question available, and asking it plainly at the start costs you a few uncomfortable minutes rather than a year.

They are actually available

Legally, practically and emotionally, and these come apart. A person can be divorced for three years and still be occupied by it. Another can be six months out and genuinely finished.

What to look for is whether they can describe the previous relationship as something concluded. This is worth assessing in yourself too, and we have written separately about what emotional availability actually means.

Their life has room in it

Time, energy, and an arrangement that functions without improvisation. Someone whose circumstances are chaotic is not offering you a relationship so much as a role.

This is worth being specific about rather than sentimental. If you have your children four nights a week and they travel constantly, that is a real obstacle and the affection between you does not remove it.

How they behave when something goes wrong

A cancelled booking, a delay, an error by someone serving them. Minor friction is the cheapest available test of character and it appears within the first few meetings if you are watching.

What you are looking for is proportion. Not calm exactly, because some irritation is reasonable, but a response sized to the event.

Values that will produce decisions you can live with

Not shared opinions. Shared operating assumptions about money, obligation to family, honesty, and what the two of you owe each other.

These surface in small decisions long before they surface in large ones, which is why the ordinary business of arranging a weekend is more informative than a conversation about beliefs.

The things people list that do not predict much

Shared interests. The most over-weighted criterion in dating. Two people with entirely different hobbies who find each other easy are in better shape than two with matching interests and no rapport, a distinction our note on chemistry versus compatibility takes apart properly.

Profession. A proxy for things you could assess directly, and a poor one.

A narrow age band. Often the single filter doing the most damage to an already limited pool, and rarely examined by the person applying it.

Immediate attraction. Real and worth something. Also a weak predictor on this timeline, where it frequently develops over three or four meetings rather than arriving at the first.

Dealbreakers are worth writing down, and worth keeping short

A genuine dealbreaker is something you would end an otherwise good relationship over. By that standard most people have two or three, not fifteen.

Common legitimate ones: wanting children when the other does not, a fundamental difference about where to live, active addiction, dishonesty about something material. Common illegitimate ones, in the sense that they will not survive contact with reality: height, a particular income, an unwillingness to consider anyone with children.

The exercise worth doing is writing the list and then asking, of each item, whether you would really end something good over it. Most lists shorten considerably.

Frequently asked questions

Am I being too picky?

Probably not about the things that matter and possibly about the things that do not. Being exacting about intent, availability and character is sound. Being exacting about height, profession and a five-year age band is what shrinks a pool to nothing. The useful question is not whether your standards are too high but whether they are pointed at the right things.

Should I compromise?

On preferences, routinely. On circumstances, sometimes and with your eyes open. On the small number of genuine dealbreakers, no, and attempting it tends to produce a slow failure rather than a quick one.

How do I find out about character without interrogating someone?

Mostly by paying attention rather than asking. Character shows up in how someone treats staff, whether they do the small thing they said they would, and what happens when a plan falls through. Very little of it comes out of direct questioning, which is why several ordinary meetings beat one intense conversation.

My list has not worked so far. What should I change?

Look at whether it is mostly preferences. If the criteria you actually apply when deciding whether to meet someone are demographic, you are filtering on the category with the least predictive power while leaving the important ones to chance.

Is it reasonable to want someone financially secure?

Yes, and it is worth being precise about what you mean. Most people asking this want an absence of chaos and a compatible attitude to money rather than a particular figure. Those are different requirements, and the first is both more important and easier to assess. It is also the slowest kind of trust to build: Pew Research Center found that 84% of married adults deeply trust their spouse to be faithful, but only 56% trust them to handle money responsibly.

When the criteria that matter are the hardest to check

The pattern above is awkward: the criteria that predict most are the ones you cannot establish from a profile, and the ones you can establish from a profile predict least. That is the central problem with searching alone, and it is the problem a matchmaker exists to solve. Intent, availability and circumstances are verified before an introduction is made, which leaves you to assess the part that genuinely requires meeting someone. If that division of labour appeals, you can begin with an application.