Theodosia, are you around? If you are, could you please check your e-mail or jump on AIM?

But then you're keeping people down! Shouldn't upgrades be possible?

It's about more than looks, but I do think one person in a couple shouldn't be "better" than the other one, overall. And I, personally, don't want to be with someone who is significantly dumber or less funny than I am (or whatever), so I figure it's best that we're the same level of attractiveness. Not that we look alike.

I do think one person in a couple shouldn't be "better" than the other one, overall

For internal assessment of "better" or external?

Me, I figure if you can get together you should be together as long as you can healthily stay together. Everything else is distraction, and relationships are hard enough as they are.

I'd hate to think I shouldn't date someone intensely bright or funny or not athletic, for instance. I mean, what with my current hit rate, if I start putting more restrictions on paper, I'll be aloner for longer.

I'd hate to think I shouldn't date someone intensely bright or funny or not athletic

I'm sure it compensates in other ways. Not that I'm familiar with that or anything.

I'm totalling everything together. So maybe one person is funnier and the other is more athletic, or one is better looking but the other makes more money, or whatever, but it all works out in the end.

Allyson, if your phone does Bluetooth, you need this.

I'm sure it compensates in other ways.

At which point the definition of "better" starts to crumble and fall apart.

Unless you're using a spreadsheet or Crystal Reports.

I guess I don't believe that many people are "better" than me (and if they are, I probably don't know them well enough).

I also don't believe I'm "better" than that many people. I'm better at some things, and bettered at others. I dislike some people, disrespect some people, or are bored by them, but it doesn't make me "better".

Hey, I didn't say it was a perfect theory.

Just read over on zap2it that Charmed got renewed AND they're adding yet another witch.

Sheesh.

One of my roommates keep saying how she only wants to end up with a man who is smarter than her. But she actually means "books smart", as far as I can tell. She has great intuition when it comes to people and she 'reads' them very accurately (undertanding their emotions even when hidden, the motives behind what they were doing, stuff like that). In my eyes, that's awefully smart (but then she disagrees). I guess what I'm trying to say is that in whatever one person is better than the other, it's highly likely that the other person is better than the first one in something else.

[Edit: which is exactly what ita said, only much longer, clumsier and includes my roommate.]

Then again, I don't think I should post about these matters. The last guy I blind-dated (who saw the world very differently than me. So differently that at more than one time I was wondering why on earth does he still want to continue seeing me) confessed, when we talked and decided that this is not working, that the only reason he continued this not-really-a-relationship was because he thought I was smart. And the only reason he thought that was because once, when the conversation turned to some CS coding algorithm (for whatever reason that I cannot possibly imagine now), I understood what he described, while his students rarely did. Which meant not that I was smart, but that I had a couple of CS courses under my belt. So maybe I don't know what these things mean anymore.