In the interest of complexity, allow me to offer my account of why a perfect woman would be utterly undesirable.
Messes are bliss, for we call people good only because there are bad ones to contrast them with: This I take as something we can all agree on, but most certainly debate over. Suppose I constructed various series of Venn diagrams—each representing a woman I find compelling for whatever reasons—with the intention to see where they all intersect as a whole, so as to end up with a group of personal qualities that equal my perfect woman. Suppose that, one fine winter morning, I encountered this She (with a capital S). Much to my content, she’s into me, for this just happens to be a quality that the intersection caught. We have coffee ever more frequently, sharing the stories of our lives and then some. All gushy, my eyes meet yours and under the industrial North Building lights romanticism ensues. Now, what do you think happens next?
Soul-crushing normality, or an uninterrupted metaphorical (and literal) orgasm, that’s what. All the highs with no reminder that life has the tendency to not turn out how you expected.
Troubles are, in the end, a turn-on, not because fixer-uppers catalyze your creativity, but because working through troubles better prepares you for reality. And what is reality’s makeup? Well, it’s that making up stories is what helps us get by day to day. I don’t mean stories that you use pen and pad for, but stories in the sense of ideas that help you get up each morning and do things you probably don’t want to do deep down. These stories get the garbage picked up and the mail delivered, and they get you to follow through with the path you’ve chosen in life.
It is only by being confronted with problems, whether personal or not, that we are able to make up the appropriate stories to solve them.
