Try This on for Size

My husband is cooking dinner for us: roasted chicken with onions, steamed veggies, and garlic bread. He's an excellent cook. We both cook occasionally on weekends, though I think I definitely owe him a few more dinners. Anyway, he's told me I've got five more minutes. Just enough time, I hope, to add a few more thoughts on an earlier post: The Importance of Shopping Around.
What I forgot to mention then was that it's also important to try things on--whether it's a job or a jacket or a man. The process of elimination is an integral part of figuring out who you are and what you want.
It's much easier to identify what you don't like than what you like about a job (the long hours, the bad pay, the tedious work), a man (he snores, he swears, he spits when he talks) or a shirt (wrong color, itchy fabric, unflattering shape). When I look back at some of the guys I've dated, I sometimes think, what a waste of time! But I learned something from each of those relationships--about what I like and don't like, what's negotiable and what's not, and what qualities are most important to me. The night before my husband and I went on our first date, I was on the phone complaining to a friend about the guys I'd been dating. She suggested that I write down those qualities that are most important to me in a man. So I did. And--I know this is going to sound cheesey--but the next night, as Victor was talking to me over sushi and sake at Ave A Sushi, I was going through my list mentally: "check, check, check..." The next day, I called my friend back and told her: "I think I found The One." Four years and three and a half months later, Victor and I were married.
Speaking of which, my lovely husband just called up from downstairs. Dinner is served.