The Recurring Dating Debate: 'Are We All Just Too Picky?'

It was nearly 11 p.m. on Tuesday, and Lisa-2533 felt compelled to start a new topic in the Tobias & Sara Room, one of 41 popular forums on CatholicMatch. It was a question she’s asked before, one she’s shoved to the backburner that keeps sliding forward:

“Are we all just too picky?”

She’s hit on a hot subject – less than 24 hours later, the question has already elicited 35 replies and 143 views.

Lisa started the conversation by quoting an article that asks some tough questions: “Is it possible that we fuss and analyze and ponder and think way too much? Is discernment just a nice way of saying we prefer to procrastinate or that we are too terrified to decide on marriage?”

“What do you think?” she asked her fellow CMers. “Are we too picky?”

“Yes,” wrote Cate-291547. “Our priorities are out of kilter. A lot of what people – more often women – do to themselves is what I call ‘The Relationship X-Ray Machine.’ They overanalyze, pick something apart, over think, beat an issue to death, ask every friend they’ve ever had…they talk to everyone except for the person they’re with.”

David-364112, meanwhile, advocated for a nuanced kind of open mindedness. “Our narrow expectations often foreclose our ability to realize God’s plan for our lives,” he wrote. “We all need to pay less mind to our own expectations and try to look at the world more openly. This does not mean that we must compromise our standards or beliefs. It does mean that we need to be open because what God has in store for us may not be (and probably is not) what we expected.”

“Good point, David,” Angie-241523 chimed in. “I used to think I had it all figured out and I had a pretty solid list of criteria in place. One day I realized that it was just me and that list…and it was not very good company. So…out went the list. I opened my eyes to the world around me. That was the best thing I could’ve done for myself. Once I allowed myself to be open to God’s plan and to not question why or make excuses, I began to see the many blessings that He had been trying to bestow on me all along. After I opened my mind, my heart followed, which allowed me to meet many wonderful people in so many facets of everyday life.”

Allen-580511 jumped in soon after, making the case for more reasonable standards. “Most of the criteria are arbitrary and meaningless – as opposed to things that matter, such as faith, character and so on – and all they are really doing is potentially cheating themselves out of a great mate.”

Then Patrick-606389 weighed in, writing, “I will remain as picky as my conscience, scripture demand.”

What do you think? What makes criteria reasonable? How picky is too picky?