What to Look For in a Girlfriend

There's a question that I think not enough men ask themselves, and they end up being the worse for it: that is, what to look for in a girlfriend.

I have a habit of being very selective about the people I have around me. The old adage that "you are the average of your five closest friends" is one I put a lot of salt in. Where does this "averaging effect" come from, and how does it play out in real life?

The simplest way of putting it is that successful people believe successful things, and unsuccessful people believe unsuccessful things. Now, that's a very boiled down way of putting it, for you could have a guy who owns a large stake in a Fortune 500 company that's worth billions and think of him as successful, but a guy who owns six gas stations that bring him in $20,000 a month you might also think of as successful, to a different degree.

On a more personal level, you may have a friend who's dead broke, but strongly believes that buying condominiums is the road to riches. No matter how much you point out to that friend that so far his proclamations and prognostications have failed to work out for him, he'll keep harping on it again and again, and pushing you to put all your savings into buying a condo, and you'll either eventually come around to his way of seeing things (whether he's "right" or not), or get so annoyed by it that you exit the friendship.

The people around you influence you strongly for better or for worse. To become exceptional, or to remain the way you are, or to backslide.

And the person with the greatest measure of influence on you of all, with the greatest ability to steer and direct your thoughts and ideas and emotions, is, of course, the one you spend the most time with: your girlfriend.

And if you aren't being selective when selecting the most important, influential person around you, you're doing yourself a major disservice.