“The existence of multiple alternatives makes it easy to imagine alternatives that don’t exist…alternatives that combine ALL the attractive features of the ones that do exist”

Into one delusional expectation of looking for someone that has it “ALL” or no one else will do. Leading a lot of people in online dating to be miserable.

In another part of the book he says something I disagree with he says

“Social relations are different we don’t dismiss lovers the way we dismiss restaurants, cereals, or vacation spots. Treating people this way is unseemly at best and reprehensible at worst.”

The way people treat each other in the online dating arena is everyone is “disposable” because (and especially for attractive women) they have so many options and choices that the outcome with any one person is irrelevant. Before the internet it wasn’t this way because no one had that many options at their fingertips. I do it myself occasionally without even thinking twice ie: “she’s cute but she has twin 7 yr.olds” and travels for work…next  “She’s has a pretty face but she’s too tall and lives too far”……next She’s exactly what I’m looking for but low and behold she’s NOT attracted to ME”…..next……… It never ends

No one HAS to have a relationship(SO/spouse). I’m definitely a maximizer in my personal life. I’m not proud of it. It is what it is. I’d love to have a wonderful woman in my life but when I don’t life still goes on and I keep looking. Being that have no desire to be married there’s no pressure or time limit on finding someone.

Anyway EMK, I thought your answer was extraordinarily compassionate, considering how outrageously high the OP’s standards are, and there was a lot of good advice for anyone whose standards are pricing themselves out of the dating market.

Personally, if I can find a healthy, financially secure man with whom I shared a mutual attraction, respect, family values and fun, I’d feel like I’d won the lottery.

Ultra, like many women,  I think you probably should work on yourself and get over the affair and stop comparing new boyfriends to your ex-husband, and trying to outdo him.

Ultra, I had a (male) friend who was cheated on by his now-ex wife, and had done a lot of reading about cheating w/in marriage.  He says that it can make you feel revulsion against yourself, and I can echo the sentiments by the previous posters that maybe there is a sense that if you ran into your ex-husband, perhaps you would like to show him that you can do a million times better than him, in only measures that could be determined by a one-minute crossing of paths on the street?

Have you had therapy, or done work on yourself to emotionally process and deal with your ex-husband’s affair?