TheSoko.com - The Illusion of the Dating Portfolio

Most of us have created portfolios to promote ourselves in our careers, so why not a dating portfolio? Lilian Sue explains what we all want our dating portfolios to contain.

I was walking through the hallway of one of Simon Fraser’s main buildings when a sign outside of the SFU Art Gallery caught my attention. It was for a gallery exhibit by Vancouver-based photographer Susan Bozic, called The Dating Portfolio. Curious, I stepped inside the exhibit to take a look. Bozic took a series of photographs in which she staged several dates with a male mannequin named Carl. On a blurb about the exhibit, Bozic said she intended to show all the “good” in dating situations that people embrace and promote about themselves and none of the “bad,” because to the outside world, it doesn’t exist.

I thought to myself: we write portfolios to promote our talents and experience in things like writing or art, so maybe Bozic had the right idea with a dating portfolio, because we all enjoy promoting the good in relationships.

Physical Attraction

I know every woman finds different physical traits attractive in a guy. Personally, what I find attractive in one guy, might not be attractive in another. Still, I have my own standbys, one of the main ones being the eyes. I can’t say how many times I’ve been drawn to a guy because of the colour and the depth of his eyes. It might be cliché, but the eyes are truly the windows to the soul. The second element would be a guy’s smile. I can’t stress how attractive a beautiful smile (and yes, that means nice white teeth) is to me. Still, the most important component of physical attractiveness to me and to the majority of my girlfriends is confidence. Nothing is sexier than a man who is self-assured.

Romance

Every relationship needs romance. It’s what every woman has tattooed into her mind since birth; relationships contain candlelit dinners, walks on the beach and declarations of undying love. Hollywood has only emphasized that point even more, every time a blockbuster such as The Notebook or Titanic is released. Somewhere deep inside, all women want the knight in shining armour to rescue us from our problems. However, from talking to girlfriends, co-workers, mentors and the like, I’ve discovered they agree with me when I say it’s all about the little things. Romance to me is having my boyfriend willingly go to a poetry reading with me because he knows I love them, even though he hates them. Romance is having someone to give you a back rub after a stressful day. Grand gestures are nice, but I don’t need an elaborate celebration just on Valentine’s Day to know that he loves me; just having him around is enough.

Communication

I’ve included communication as one of the topics women always talk about when it comes to our dating portfolios because we all want everything to be perfect. Your significant other always listens, doesn’t interrupt and doesn’t disagree with you either…but we all know that this isn’t possible. All you can do is try to listen as actively as you can most of the time, try not to interrupt and learn how to compromise in the event you don’t agree. We all have problems speaking to our significant others from time to time, since emotion isn’t something you can control, but the good comes from how you deal with it.

_____________________________
promoting the good

There’s nothing wrong with focusing on the good in relationships. It’s human nature to want to focus on and talk about the good instead of the bad. The key is to not get carried away with what we believe to be the ideal conditions in a relationship. Don’t define a relationship by stereotypical Hollywood examples of what it should be, and don’t pigeonhole yourself with a long list of what you think could work. If you do that, you might miss out on someone you would never have thought it would work out with, and all of the good experience that comes along with it. After all, we could all stand to have more experience to slip into our dating portfolios the next time we sit down to drinks with the girls, couldn’t we?