Well I did the traditional thing of going to various girls' houses and families. It was brutal. Most of the time I was crippled by nervousness. You're just thrust into this situation with people you don't even know, and it can't be casual because everyone knows why you are there. Her family is analyzing me, and I'm analyzing the girl. And she's doing the same thing back, plus she's super nervous as well. Then the parents, uncles, and aunts will start talking about stuff that the younger people can't even relate to like things that happened in 1957. So the younger people just sit all quiet because they can't really contribute to the conversation. Other times the younger people would be allowed to go into another room. This worked a lot better, but still the context is that you're still on show and so is she. In all the times I did the meet-at-the-family-place thing, only once was I able to just feel relaxed and be myself. And that was because the girls brother and I totally got along as we ended up talking about cars and stuff. I was also able to take charge of the conversation. However the prospective girl was so nervous she didn't say a word, but her other sister was totally into the conversation. So inside I started feeling more interested in the sister, who wasn't really a prospect, but because she wasn't on show she was totally relaxed and being herself... and I wasn't on show to her, so I was being relaxed. So at least I got to see her real personality as opposed to all the other situations where everyone is on their best behavior and the pressure is so high that you can't really be yourself.

Since you can rarely just be yourself, I never felt a strong vibe on any girl I met through this mechanism. It's too artificial. This meeting a person once and having a feeling of what you want to do as per the rules just wasn't happening. I discovered very rapidly that people and relationships are a hell of a lot more complex than what I originally thought. I mean, I wasn't even feeling a "no, I don't like her" kind of thing, I wasn't feeling anything. I never got to know enough about the person to even develop a feeling of what I think. There was nothing wrong with any of them, but I didn't feel anything overly right either. So I left each one of those meetings with a neutral feeling. I tried doing multiple meetings, but it never came, and plus the family wanted an answer ASAP. It culturally doesn't jive if you want to meet 20 times. But it would take a lot of time, under those circumstances to get to know the person even a little bit.

The traditional style where you just meet once or twice, and if the specs check out go for it, are still in use. But that criteria doesn't work for me personally. Yes I wanted to get married, but not to just anyone. And certainly not just for the sake of it. I want to marry someone because I truly want to be with her. That there's something about them that draws me, someone that I can share what's inside me, that I can share my stories with, and feel that I relate to that person.

Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of people still going the traditional style and being extremely successful at it. It is all a learning process, and during the process you learn what conditions you need to feel comfortable. When it comes down to it, when you've found the one, you've found the one. Whether you can make that determination after one meeting, or after a years worth of conversing, the result is the same. You've found the person you want to spend the rest of your life with. To me it's all about the vibe, when your vibe is strong, your search is over.

Trying The Friend Route...

I then started informing friends of the same religion to hook me up with any potentials they know about. This I found to be a much better medium for meeting someone. Because you're with a group of friends, everyone knows each other so there's a lot less pressure. My friends set something up with this one girl, and it went amazing. They told me after that she actually liked me, and for a person who thought no one would ever like him, I was blown away. But because of little experience in this whole field, I still was learning to figure out what I wanted in a mate, and what was important to me. Things really progressed, but I was driven more by infatuation more than anything else. The reality was we were complete opposites. Which in general can be ok as opposites attract, and can compliment each other. But our whole philosophies and perspectives on life completely clashed.

It eventually ended, and I was totally devastated for a long time. Severing a tight bond with someone was unbelievably painful, and yet another thing to add to my knowledge base of relationships. After the fact though, it was a good experience. It was something I needed to go through, because it gave me what I needed. It helped me very rapidly learn more about what makes a relationship work, what things are unimportant, and what characteristics tend to be compatible. I was so shielded from girls growing up, that I was so naïve that I thought it was tremendously important to have similar musical tastes, because if the girl didn't like my music I wouldn't be allowed to listen to it.

Gathering Knowledge...

During that time I was hoping to gain from the experience of others, and I literally sat down in the cubicle of each of my office mates and asked them how they knew the girl they married was the one. I wanted the answer. I read many books, heard from the experience of others, and you know what the answer was? There is no answer. There's no one answer actually. Others I knew who tried the traditional route seemed to just know within one meeting if that person was the one, so I figured the answer was like being hit with a bolt of lightning.

Well for those who do the traditional route, with these cultures they keep a tight lid on the details, so what you get is the ultra condensed version and you never really get the flat out straight up information. With these cultures, if it's not a perfect answer you'll be gossiped about. So you'll always hear "well we met and really hit if off and that was it." This can and does happen, but you're not going to find out what hitting it off translates to.