It wasn’t until I was explaining this to a newly pre-qualified woman looking for a home, that I was able to see a parallel in my own life. We had put in the criteria for her new home into a search to see how many homes fit that description. While we thought we had tightened it up a lot, there were 976 homes that fit her description and price range currently on the market in Jacksonville!

Wow. We made the square footage larger and took off town homes, and that brought the figure down…..to 748! She looked at me with an overwhelmed expression and I have to admit, I had to overcome a bit of that myself. I told her that many of these homes had been on the market one year, many more even two years, and they had been looked over many times and hadn’t found a buyer. Perhaps she would easily discard them as well. If she was willing to go through and give a thumbs up or down to the long list of homes that had been on the shelf so long, we would be confident she had not missed the one that was perfect for her.

I was certain, once she chose maybe five to ten of those that we could make an appointment to look at, after we did that there would only be one or two new additions per week and those we could easily keep up with. She got right into it and started narrowing the field immediately, as there were only a few that caught her eye. Once we check those out we may find one that she loves, but if we don’t we will be up to date with everything available and can wait for the new ones to be listed from which to make her final choice.

It never occurred to me before that I was approaching the singles sites the wrong way. When I go back on, with fresh optimism about once every year, I get so overwhelmed in the first week that I almost always check out within a week, at best a month. Partly it is because I see many of the same pictures I saw a year or two ago, the same exactly written profiles, still there. It implies absolutely no growth or change to me, and I have allowed that frustration to stop me dead in my tracks. Aren’t I then only repeating my behavior that hasn’t worked very well for me? Hmmmm.

A house that hasn’t been cared for in a year or two looks none the better for neglect when you see it today. A person who has not even thought to update a picture that obviously isn’t working for them probably isn’t interested in marketing himself very well. He is thinking Ms Right is just going to come along and fall for that old picture and be delighted when they show up in person and look nothing like their old self. Good Luck with that.

It discourages me when I see that and get unsubstantial emails from so many men that I cannot even process them. They hit the button on every attractive new woman, just hoping for the best. This makes the first week or two particularly challenging for a woman. It takes a lot of patience to go through those early responses to get caught up on the backlog. There is probably a point where only the new people come in, and you cease processing the ones who have been there too long and have no interest in changing their tactics.

I personally have never lasted through the backlog. In light of what I was saying to my excited new buyer, anticipating the home of her dreams, I can see that I failed to apply that principal to my own life experience in this area. As difficult as it is, and I am not about to make it my new job, as some apparently are doing, I still would like to believe that I will stand out to Mr. Right For Me Now, and not be just a number on his list of fifty possibilities.

However, Mr. Right For Me Now can’t find me if I have left the building (or the website, as it were). Here’s to perseverance and a new degree of  patience!