How to Screen for a Girlfriend

Have you ever thought about what you want in a mate? Aside from being attractive, are there certain qualities that you are looking for?

One of the most important qualities of an attractive man is that he is selective. He is selective because he has options, and he has options because women perceive him as being valuable.

He may want a monogamous relationship, but to get there, he’s probably going to date a variety of women to meet the one he really likes: one that makes him happy, fulfills his needs, and with whom he’s compatible.

If you’re new to playing the field, this can be difficult. It’s been my experience that men with limited dating experience are often tempted to settle down with the first woman that they become intimately involved with, and in many cases, this can be a disaster.

The Screening Process

When you first meet a woman, the sexual tension should be strong enough to keep you both interested. This experience can feel amazing, since it’s new and exciting. You’re both getting to know each other.

When the sexual chemistry peaks, you’ll often find that you’re spending a lot of your time with her being physically intimate. Unfortunately, this excitement doesn’t last forever, and sex can’t be the basis for a healthy long-term relationship. You’re going to need more if you want a relationship to work.

Potential Dangers

One of our clients learned this the hard way. He was in his thirties, but didn’t have a lot of dating experience because he was so focused on his education and career (he was a successful consultant with an engineering degree).

In his mid-twenties, he became so infatuated with a woman he was dating that within a couple of months, he had not only made her his girlfriend, but they moved in together and got engaged. Two months before the wedding, he found out that she had been cheating on him.

It later turned out that she had been in an exclusive relationship with someone else while they first started dating, and had cheated on several of her previous boyfriends. She was simply a disloyal and dishonest person.

He was lucky because it could have been worse. He could have married her, had this go on for a decade or so, and then had her take half of everything he owned in a divorce.

Still, committing to the wrong person caused him tremendous amounts of emotional grief and heartache. It distracted him at work, and almost cost him his career. He came to us to help him get this part of his life sorted out, which we helped him to do.

What to Screen For

At Craft of Charisma, we encourage any client who has an explicit goal of getting a girlfriend to first develop a clear vision for where he wants his life to go, and then describe what that looks like in detail. After that, he’s required to write down his “Girlfriend Criteria.”

The “Girlfriend Criteria” is a simple one page document that describes the qualities that a man is looking for in a partner, as he pursues his broader vision for his life. It focuses on the qualities that he’ll need in a partner in order to build that vision.

This “Girlfriend Criteria” is organized into three categories:

Essentials
Nice-to-haves
Deal-breakers

Essentials are often qualities like:

Emotional health
Kindness
Honesty
Good with people
Physically attractive
Accepting of who I am

Nice-to-haves might include:

Successful career
No children
Has never been married

Deal-breakers could include:

Unfaithful
Selfish
Isn’t physically affectionate

Every person’s criteria is going to be different, depending upon their needs, values, and experiences.

This approach is helpful because it gives men a basis to screen out women. It does so based on qualities that are aspirational, and on degrees of importance around the broader vision for their lives. It also allows men to screen out women for qualities that are red flags as they pursue their vision.

Then we push these men to go out and date to test their theories on what they’re looking for. Through this process, their “Girlfriend Criteria” evolves.

Often, the men find that in the past they were screening for the wrong qualities, such as her physical attractiveness or whether she was receptive to their advances. As a result, they pursued the wrong women and had to deal with those consequences.

However, by following this new process, they’re able to get their dating lives back on track and have happier and more meaningful relationships.