Choosing the Right Qualities in a Woman

I had a couple of discussions with friends yesterday about the women they’re dating. One of my friends is going through a rough breakup with his live-in girlfriend whom he’s been financially supporting for the past half year since she hasn’t been able to find a job and has run out of money. He’s been giving her “emergency cash” that she’s then been using to go party, buy drinks, take skiing trips when he’s not in town, and lend out to her girlfriends. And at least once, she’s called him up in late at night out with friends of hers pleading him to come help her because she’s run out of money and no one else has money and she needs cab fare to get home.

My other friend is dating a girl who cooks well for him and is positive, but who also isn’t the greatest on the looks-scale and isn’t the smartest. He wasn’t crazy about her at first, but now she’s starting to grow on him.

To be honest, both of these situations freaked me out a little bit. To my first friend, I said, “Why the hell are you financing this girl’s frivolity?” He said he knew, and he was ending it, but he hadn’t expected all that to happen and he just kind of fell into it. To my second friend, I said, “You realize you’re getting comfortable and settling in with a sub-par woman, right?” He said he knew, and he should probably go look for something else, but he was just so comfortable.

Neither of these guys are bad with women, or inexperienced with women. They both do all right. But both of them didn’t do something that’s a top priority for me early on: screening out bad potential situations before they arise.