In the spirit of discovering what makes a man exceptional, I’ve invited a series of female guest bloggers to write on that very subject. Every Friday we’ll hear a different woman’s perspective on “What makes a man exceptional?” This week we have the pleasure of hearing from Paige Worthy. Enjoy.–cg
As I sat down to write this, Christina Aguilera’s “Ain’t No Other Man” started playing in iTunes.
This is sign of one of two things, depending on your perspective: that I was born to blog about this, or that you should immediately stop reading this. Because you have just judged my musical taste so hard that you will take nothing I’ve said seriously. But for the record, I’m just eclectic. That Backstreet Boys album? Somebody’s playing a prank on me.
But it’s no surprise that some song should pop up about having found that exceptional man, that diamond in the rough. So much art — music, poetry, paintings, you name it — has been dedicated to love and the pursuit of the perfect mate through the years. Love tragically lost, love painfully unrequited, love that was there along but went unnoticed until it was too late.
Some people, however, are a bit more dedicated. My entire life, it seems, has been one tragic ode to my pursuit of the exceptional man. Starting in middle school. (First boyfriend’s bowl haircut immediately disqualified him.) But by sophomore year of college, I’d had it up to here with choosing men who didn’t measure up to my ever-changing standards of exceptional qualities, so that summer, I made a list of the good traits I wanted, to stop myself from repeating my mistakes.
That list is nestled somewhere in some shoebox of ex-boyfriend mementoes, but these shoes aren’t suited for a walk down Memory Lane. Instead, I’ll excerpt a few bullet points from memory:
- Money to take me out (don’t beat around the bush, Paige)
- Great hair (learned something from that middle school boyfriend after all)
- Well traveled
- Likes good food
- Good taste in music
- Buys me gifts
- Nice teeth
- Taller than me
Followed closely, this checklist would result in a Ken doll with working parts. You can’t see Ken’s teeth, but they’re obviously perfect. As I headed into my junior year, list in hand, I knew what I was looking for. And four years after that, after considerable trial and error — it’s hard to read a detailed list like that with desperation and beer goggles on — I found him. A friend from high school who went off to college the shy, silent type and emerged from the cocoon a successful man with solid credentials. On paper, he was nothing short of exceptional: a good job, fun friends, a great apartment in Lakeview (and a garage with a BMW), a family who adored me, fantastic taste in wine, fashion sense (a J. Crew dream), a killer sense of humor. This was the guy. I moved to Chicago to be with him, actually, and I thought that was it. We lived happily ever after.
For four months.
Then I got bored. And we went our separate ways.
Great on paper, turns out, isn’t enough for me. There are few surprises when you can fit much of what you love about him into a one-page list. This guy is still someone I adore on many levels (not just for those surface qualities), and he probably is an exceptional man. But he’s not my exceptional man.
For some reason, I hung on to my little list and kept it in the back of my mind as I continued dating in Chicago. Wayyyy in the back. A year after that breakup, after more soul-crushing trial and error, I enrolled in a guitar class at a local music school. One night, a substitute teacher took over our class, and we talked afterward about music and life and heartbreak and how it’s not enough to be perfect on paper. Not my type, but a great guy. A good friend. A few weeks later, we ran into each other at Starbucks and exchanged contact information. We wrote pages of e-mails and later had long talks on my loveseat, and things progressed naturally, if painfully slowly, until he surprised me with a kiss.
But…but… Not my type! He’s older than me. (No, really. Older.) He’s been married. He has children. He’ll be paying child support and student loans for a long time. He’s shorter than me. He hates his teeth. I saw him wear jean shorts once. The little boxes on my list went largely unchecked. But it didn’t matter — well, the jean shorts mattered, but that was once — because suddenly I felt different than ever before.
So I abandoned the list and let myself fall.
Point by point, he has broken nearly all the rules I once had. And in making those exceptions, I’ve seen he is nothing if not exceptional in his own right, in a way that’s harder to explain than making a simple checklist. It’s in the way he looks at me, his voice on the phone with his 4-year-old daughter. In his impeccably timed handwritten cards or farmers market gladiolus on my worst days. In the sweet sound that rings through my apartment for days after he plays “Angie” on my guitar some morning before work. In the precarious balance between his bravado and his insecurities. Intangible, unlistable, he put the “exception” in exceptional for me.
You’re the kinda guy a girl finds in a blue moon.
You’ve got soul. You’ve got class. You’ve got style. You’re badass.
Ain’t no other man, it’s true — ain’t no other man but you.
Sing it, girl.
Paige Worthy is, in fact, her real name. She’s been blogging since high school and looking for love even longer. For more scintillating prose — often about the Exceptional Man in question — visit www.paigeworthy.com.
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What makes a man exceptional?
Nothing.
Except having a partner who believes it.
aww have i mentioned i think you write amazingly? those checklists confine ourselves more than help, i think. glad you could find someone who could break the rules.
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