Who Is My Dream Guy, and Should I Wait for Him?

Despite how disenchanted I am right now with my love life, I know my dream guy is out there. So every day I try to have the faith that he exists. It took me a while to figure out who he really is, and what he’s like. Now that I have, the only hard part is developing the patience to wait for him, and not give him up. Or worse yet, settle.

My Dream Guy – Age Fifteen

I remember when I first came up with the idea of my dream guy. I was fifteen and found myself relating his description to my Form Four classmates in secondary school. At the time, he looked like this:

• Must be older than me
• Must be taller than me
• Must have a better job/ earning more money than me
• Must be as smart or smarter than me

Of course, I also had a preference when it came to my dream guy’s ethnicity. Since the tender age of six, I’ve been attracted to Indian or mixed men. At that time, I had developed a crush on one of the boys living in the downstairs part of the apartment complex that we lived in. He was of Indian descent.  Then, years later, I fell for another boy in my Standard Five primary school class. He was a mixture of African and Indian (or a ‘dougla’, as we Trinis call them). I’ve also been partial to white, Latin or Asian guys that I’d see on TV. It’s not that I don’t like black guys: two of my crushes were black. One later turned out to be questionably gay, and the other is now married.

As you’ve probably noted, my criteria at the time heavily relied on outward attributes, as opposed to the character of the guy. At the time, I never really had rules for what I would and would not take. All I knew was that they shouldn’t smoke, shouldn’t hit, and shouldn’t cheat.

My Dream Guy – Age Twenty

A whole lot can really change in five years, particularly when you transition from adolescence into adulthood. By the time I became twenty, my dream guy on paper became less superficial. All I wanted was a guy who would treat me right, who I could have fun with, and who I could have a lot in common with. There was certainly a bit more substance added to his profile, but his picture still wasn’t very clear. So much so that when I met my ex, who was my first ever boyfriend by the way, he pretty much appeared to be ‘the one’.

My ex and I met online on Facebook. He told me that he discovered my music on Reverbnation, as he wanted to get to know other local electronic producers. During our first chat, I instantly took a liking to him. For starters, he was a supremely talented guitarist, and a really good singer. He was a bit of an intellectual, and could hold my interest in a conversation. He was also left-handed, just like me. And sure, he was also Indian. But I was wary of the fact that he smoked. I was anti-smoking, after all.

Then one day, he told me that he was forced to quit after a recent bout of bronchitis. When he said that he quit, I allowed myself to develop a stronger crush on him. I confessed my feelings, he didn’t reciprocate at first, but eventually he expressed interest and, what do you know, we got together!

Four months into our relationship, I saw him smoking again. I was flabbergasted. Didn’t he say he quit? I felt betrayed, and ultimately flipped out. It led to our first big fight, one of those ones where we didn’t talk for days. Now, had I been more firm with my rules, I’d have broken up with him right then and there. But now that we were involved and I had strong feelings for him, and largely because it was my first ever relationship, that ‘no smoking’ rule became more of an option as opposed to a requirement.

Of course, we eventually made up. He proposed that he could stop smoking in front of me, as it bothered me so much. That worked at first, but eventually he resumed smoking in front of me. Then I tried my best to tolerate it. But I knew deep down that I still wasn’t fine with it.

The problem with not being clear on your dream guy

I realise now that when I let the ‘no-smoking’ requirement slide, I set up a precedent to let other things slide too. When I stopped having a clear picture of my dream guy altogether, I allowed myself to accept certain behaviours that really didn’t gel well with me, all for the sake of love. And that’s a huge problem. I stayed in that relationship much too long partly because of fear that my dream guy wasn’t out there. It was also because I didn’t love myself.

I now firmly believe that we need to keep the faith in our dream guy, our ‘Prince Charming’. We may not get everything we desire in terms of who we imagine, but we need to at least be clear on our values and our dealbreakers. But how do we separate the essentials from the non-essentials? Here’s how.

Defining your relationship values, requirements, needs and wants

I found a wonderful relationship coach in Bruce Muzik, the founder of Love at First Fight. Although he wasn’t able to help me save my failing, flailing relationship, he did help give me the tools to improve my relationship and communication skills. He also gave me the template to identify my dream guy by determining my values, requirements, needs and wants.

The first thing I had to do was identify my values. He said that to be happy in any relationship, as in life, we must choose to live in alignment with our highest values. We should therefore be aware of our most important values, as well as the ones we would like to share with our ideal partner.

Next, I had to imagine my ideal life and relationship. I had to imagine what would make me happy and fulfilled. This would then shed light on some of the attributes of my new dream guy. The trick, however, was being honest with myself about what I wanted, and not forcing my then boyfriend into the picture.

Finally, I defined my requirements, needs and wants. These came out of the picture of my ideal life and relationship. The requirements are the non-negotiables, the deal breakers. For these, we ask ourselves if we didn’t have it in the relationship, would we walk. If the answer is yes, then voila, it’s a requirement. An example of a requirement would be that your partner believes in marriage and wants to get married.

Next were the needs. Our needs are the criteria that when unmet, tend to produce conflict. These, unlike requirements, are negotiable. Such a need could be picking up after one’s self, or having your partner say ‘I love you’.

Lastly, the wants are essentially the icing on the cake. These are much more fluid in nature, as they are subject to change throughout our lifetime. Physical attributes are something that would fall under this category. By sorting all the potential attributes of my dream guy into these requirements, needs and wants, I now had a better idea of what truly mattered, and what was just fluff.

My Dream Guy, Version 3.0

Using Bruce’s advice, I came up with a more fully-rounded picture of who my dream guy is. To give you an idea, I’ll share this snippet of the life vision statement I came up with during the exercise:

I want to be with someone who accepts me for me, values my emotional expressions, and doesn’t shame me for having them. I think this person, like me, should value honesty, trust, reliability, support, and above all, respect. He will make me feel safe so that I can always be honest with him. I will always feel cared for and loved. He will also believe in marriage and want to be married to me. He will also be anti-smoking and addiction-free.

If I’m having a child with this man, we will have one. We will prioritise our child’s needs, but she/he will never be all-consuming to us. We will always make time for each other, always fanning the flames of intimacy between us.

Waiting for him

So now I wait. And wait some more. And it’s been hard, I won’t lie. But to be honest, I think that waiting for my dream guy isn’t just an act of loving the idea of him. It’s also an act of loving myself. It’s funny how everything always comes back to the concept of self-love. I think we should value ourselves enough to know what we value most in life, and then what we absolutely will not put up with in life. Doing this can help us to avoid settling for someone who’s okay, but definitely not the right guy. It helps us to confidently say no to what we don’t want, so that we are one step closer to getting what we do want.

I recommend that if you decide to do the exercise, that you allocate some hours to a day to spend on it. This is important, as it sets the tone for your entire love life. It helps you add shape and edges to your love life, edges of course meaning boundaries. It helps you to obtain some perspective when either dating or in a relationship, as those fuzzy love hormones can often cause us to lose all objectivity. Lastly, it helps remove the smudges from those rose-tinted glasses you’ve been wearing through life, better enabling you to get a clearer vision of him.