Laws of attraction ...

In my native Danish language, we have several contradicting proverbs:
- "Krage søger mage" (The crow will seek out his likeness)
- "Lige børn leger bedst" (Children of equal status play best together)
- "Modsætninger mødes"(Opposites attract)
I think the general lesson here is that you decide what you believe, and you will find evidence to support your beliefs.

I think in all relationships - from friendship and marriage to business partnerships - there must be some common ground that allows you to understand each other and build trust, and there must be some differences so that you will be challenged to evolve your thinking. I think these contrasting requirements play out at every level and every stage of engagement.

My business partner and I have some similarities: Roughly similar ages, both engineers, both immigrants from Europe, and arrived in Santa Barbara the same year. Both married "native girls", and obviously we are both engineers working in telecommunications. But we also have some differences: He is more athletic, I am more intellectual. He gets more focused and I am more of a generalist, looking for interconnections between systems. And when we do development projects, he is the one who jumps up and down with excitement over theis new thing he has figured out that we could do, while I am the grumpy old man explaining why it won't really work, and he figures out how to get around each of my objections. That does not mean that he is an optimist and I am a negative grouch: Those are important roles, and if either of us switched roles, the other one would have to switch too, so that the opposite role would be filled in. (My wife and I did that too, but we had much less of an understanding that both roles were important.)

So when I am browsing all the profile pages at Match.com, I find it hard to define what it is that I am looking for. I do think that I am looking for someone of roughly my own age, even if my male instinct pulls me towards the pretty young babes; those young ones surely are repulse by old men like me, and even if I could charm them with wealth and life experience (as used to be considered reasonable and respectable for older men to do) it couldn't possibly last. I also knoiw that I am looking for someone intelligent and assertive: "a hard headed woman" as Dylan sang. Someone who will keep me honest and put me in my place when I deserve it. "First rate people surround themselves with other first rate people. Second rate people surround themselves with third rate people so that they can feel superior to everyone else." I want to be a first rate person.

As I have looked at hundreds of profiles of women in the appropriate age range who live within 25 miles, and clicked "add to favorites" on dozens of pages that have possibilities, some patterns have emerged. There are several lawyers. A couple of nurses. Some academics. A few psychotherapists. And a handful of interior decorators. That last category REALLY took me by surprise.

The lawyers make sense: Smart people, busy with their work, needing help with relationships. Not surprising that they need to go to Match.com.
The nurses make sense too: Wonderful practical people with a positive attitude. There are very few of them on Match, but I would be attracted to them because they tend to be wonderful people.
The academics make sense in the same way: They tend to be happy people, mostly figure out how to marry their own kind, but when divorced and widowed in middle life, they are bewildered like myself; try the dating scene and get disgusted, and eventually find Match.
The psychotherapists are almost scary. I would never seek them out, I thought. But the ones I accidentally stumbled on, were such interesting people. And I can see how the profession would get in the way of "normal" ways of dating.
But the interior decorators make no sense to me why they should be here. My prejudicial stereotype says they are superficial people, obsessed with how people and things LOOK; if they are at all successful in their jobs, they are constantly exposed to wealthy, attractive clients that should be great hunting grounds. What are they doing on Match? - Of course the ones I have found worthy of looking at are not quite like that stereotype. They are women af artistic sensibility with vivid dreams of interesting places in the world, and eclectic thoughts about both the places they have seen, and the places they long for.

Still I am puzzled. I keep wondering if my stereotype was completely wrong, or it is just that there are so many interior decorators here that even a small subset of the group is a significant number of people?