Build-a-Date

 One of my favorite ways to spend an empty Saturday or weekday evening is to fire up The Sims 3 on my laptop and fill a few hours with creating variations of myself, friends, and fictional characters. Usually my goal is just to let the Sims live happy little lives with lavish houses, interesting careers, and fun side-gigs like jockeying, playing guitar in parks, or scuba diving for treasure. Sometimes I mix it up and decide to see how disastrous I can make the Sim. Either way, I tend to have certain trends in how I make the characters.

Whenever I make my Sim, I always use some combination of the same seven traits:

Usually the lifetime goal of my Sim is to become a five star chef or be best friends with 20 cats or become a bestselling author (all of which are pretty darn close to things I would strive for in reality). Sometimes I just focus on achieving those goals for my Sim, but other times I will add in a family for them or a relationship to pursue.

Recently while creating another Sim family, I realized all the imaginary partners I have made for my self-insert Sims use a combination of another seven traits:

All of these traits match exactly with what I'm looking for in a real-life partner and are things that have been sorely lacking in my dating attempts over the last few years (and more recently, the last couple of weekends). 

Now, obviously it isn't going to be possible for me to plug those traits into a dating app and have my perfect partner pop out. However, I didn't think it would be so rare to see someone with at least a few of these traits come up. Yes, I've seen people who are clearly athletic or play an instrument, but I'll match with them on Hinge and they aren't able to carry a conversation or quickly demonstrate how little ambition they have. Or, even more disappointing: they'll be able to carry a conversation, we'll meet up, and they are incredibly boring in person.

The main reason I've remained single this long (other than the timing issues) is I refuse to settle. I'm not willing to get serious or stay with someone who doesn't stay interesting or add to my life in a way that I can't add to it on my own. 

I'm trying to remind myself I've only been on the app for about a month and have already met two people and have been asked to meet several more. I'm planning to use Hinge for six months as the first stage of my dating adventure, so there is still plenty of time to meet someone on it. All the same, I can't help but feel discouraged that so far no one I've met or chatted with seems like they fit my list of partner traits.

I guess I'll just have to keep playing The Sims 3 if I want an ideal partner.