Because last night we spoke to a womanizer who gave us the insightful advice that this is the time in your life to gaze into the eyes of people, until you start to blush, and take it from there.

This is your opportunity to explore emotions and relations, before you have your three kids and baking cookies in a house somewhere. (Loving it, of course.) Seeing that he is a networker deluxe, he jokingly suggested that he would start scouting interesting characters for us to get to know. Although slightly, utterly, resistant to look at love as a mission and a business, it got us thinking about what list of criteria we might present. Our only belief is that the universe knows better than we do regarding who we should be with, but naturally, we are aware of certain characteristics we value above others. By really narrowing it down, there are two main ones:

- Confident and utterly comfortable in yourself
- Intelligent humor (Filip & Fredrik, Ricky Gervais, Mitch Hedberg)

From there we could add a set of bonus traits:

- Handsome, beautiful, tall, dark
- Driven, entrepreneurial, a doer
- Passionate, about anything
- Kind, golden hearted
- Love making out
- Great dancer
- Swimmer, tennis or basketball player
- Curious
- Likes Billie Holiday, Al Green, Håkan Hellström
- Possibly diagnosed with adhd, or very talkative

If you feel that this applies to you, or if you know of fantastic men with these qualities, please let us know. We might have a completely inaccurate view of what we want, but we also know that trying and failing is a great way to learn.

Because a really good read is a commencement speech delivered by Adrian Tan. One of his advices: Fall in love.

I didn’t say “be loved”. That requires too much compromise. If one changes one’s looks, personality and values, one can be loved by anyone.

Rather, I exhort you to love another human being. It may seem odd for me to tell you this. You may expect it to happen naturally, without deliberation. That is false. Modern society is anti-love. We’ve taken a microscope to everyone to bring out their flaws and shortcomings. It far easier to find a reason not to love someone, than otherwise. Rejection requires only one reason. Love requires complete acceptance. It is hard work – the only kind of work that I find palatable.

Loving someone has great benefits. There is admiration, learning, attraction and something which, for the want of a better word, we call happiness. In loving someone, we become inspired to better ourselves in every way. We learn the truth worthlessness of material things. We celebrate being human. Loving is good for the soul.

Loving someone is therefore very important, and it is also important to choose the right person. Despite popular culture, love doesn’t happen by chance, at first sight, across a crowded dance floor. It grows slowly, sinking roots first before branching and blossoming. It is not a silly weed, but a mighty tree that weathers every storm.
You will find, that when you have someone to love, that the face is less important than the brain, and the body is less important than the heart.

You will also find that it is no great tragedy if your love is not reciprocated. You are not doing it to be loved back. Its value is to inspire you.

Finally, you will find that there is no half-measure when it comes to loving someone. You either don’t, or you do with every cell in your body, completely and utterly, without reservation or apology. It consumes you, and you are reborn, all the better for it.

And that is just the end part of a text filled with some great quotes:
"I have nothing against average people. But no one should aspire to be them."

"Don’t expect anything. Erase all life expectancies. Just live."

"Any child can blurt out the truth, without thought to the consequences. It takes great maturity to appreciate the value of silence."

"It is far too easy to be liked, one merely has to be accommodating and hold no strong convictions. Then one will gravitate towards the centre and settle into the average. That cannot be your role. There are a great many bad people in the world, and if you are not offending them, you must be bad yourself. Popularity is a sure sign that you are doing something wrong."

Oh, man.
We got another truth of the day delivered this morning by Jimmy Twin. "I would chose you anytime, but you must be aware that the world has apparent problems with appreciation."

The conclusion at last appears. I guess that, I over-reacted.
But, no. In our world, the term is: lover-reacted.

It is fascinating how an inadequate language still manages to explain a lot of things with a single tap on the key board.

We're missing something that would resemble a spark in your eyes, but today's mood find something appealing about androgynous, heroin chic men.

It will all be good in the end, and if it's not good, it is not the end. But then again, we do know that it is not the end that is near, the future is.

Because you are the person you take the time to become, and what most people seem to miss is that time is the only common nominator among us. And because you seem to know how to spend it, loosing yourself in a beautiful moment.

Although clearly beautiful, we are slightly sceptical to the choice of sweater. Maybe you made a minor error in the closet, or as our old American man of choice, Russ Ackoff, would say:

One never learns from doing things right because, obviously, one already knows how to do it. What one derives from doing something right is confirmation of what one already knows. This has value, but it is not learning. One can only learn from mistakes, by identifying and correcting them. But all through school and in most places of employment we are taught that making mistakes is a bad thing. Therefore, we try to hide or deny those we make. To the extent we succeed, we preclude learning. Furthermore, there are two types of mistakes: errors of commission, doing something we should not have done; and errors of omission, not doing something we should have done.

Needless to say, a theory much applicable to the field of romance too.

Because smiling, happy Swedes are rare, and we also believe that anything is possible if you put your mind to it. However, current research show that optimism, instead of being a virtue, it is a brain malfunction. Another term could be folk-psychologically insane.

Our thesis supervisor have given us a small stack of Jerome Bruner books on narratives and story-making and with titles like Actual minds, possible worlds, we are enjoying every page of it. In Acts of Meaning he pretty much, in his own meta-academic manner, sums up a lot of our feeling-driven behaviour;

But we also know that desire may lead us to find meanings in contexts where others might not. /.../ This reciprocal relation between perceived states of the world and one's desires, each affecting the other, creates a subtle dramatism about human action which also informs the narrative structure of folk psychology. When anybody is seen to believe or desire or act in a way that fails to take the state of the world into account, to commit a truly gratuitous act, he is judged to be folk-psychologically insane unless he as an agent can be narratively reconstructed as being in the grip of mitigating quandary or of crushing circumstances. It may take a searching judicial trial in real life or a whole novel in fiction to effect such a reconstrual. But folk psychology has room for such reconstruals: "truth is stranger than fiction."

"You've achieved success in your field when you don't know whether what you're doing is work or play," and "Marriage requires a special talent, like acting. Monogamy requires genius" are two quotes by Warren Beatty. And if you find the internet a reliable source of information, he is also cited saying that; "My notion of a wife at 40 is that a man should be able to change her, like a bank note, for two 20s."

Clearly, a black sheep lacking both genius, work and play, but still a fairly good explanation as to why he is looking so sharp in dark wool.

Because out there on the waves you seem charismatic, agreeable and adaptable and you can adapt to just about any social situation, convincing others you are just like them. And with your flexibility, liberal attitude and lack of prejudice, you can find something interesting in just about anyone. But when your interest wanes, you depart; you cannot tolerate boredom. As an Explorer you like knowledge, adventure and the pleasures of the senses, and you are drawn to those who are enthusiastic, curious, creative and energetic-people like yourself. Sex is important to you, too. As a Negotiator, you have a big heart; you are flexible and sensitive to the feelings of others and you are driven to seek harmony in your social life. So you avoid conflict, as well as people who compete with you. You also avoid those who structure your time and block things from happening spontaneously. And you can feel pressured by other's needs. So you are attracted to individuals who share your "live and let live" attitude. Money is secondary to you, so you also respect individuals who can part with theirs, particularly when spending leads to adventure or improves the world. And you are drawn to people who are direct, decisive and tough minded to balance out your flexible, spontaneous, intuitive style.

We did a very simple, five-minute personality test, and although we all seem to be very different, there are only four classic categories behaviouralists divide us into. Pretty much, people who ask who? what? how? or why? Not suprsingly, we were deemed enthusiastic, but sometimes overwhelming, inventive but a dreamer, and unrealistic. (They made a point of that your biggest strength is also your biggest weakness.) Which is why we got the suggested solution to hang out more with people on the go, take a few risks, put up concrete goals and learn to concentrate, with only occasional lapses into the romantic.

Sometime girls are dicks, sometimes boys are dicks and sometimes even we realize that you can do all the things in your power to try to get someone's attention, and still fail.
Which sucks, for sure, but what counts here is still that old saying; if you have never failed, you probably have not been doing a lot of interesting things.

Because, as Albert Camus writes in The Plague;

"... a loveless world is a dead world, and always there comes an hour when one is weary of prisons, of one's work, and of devotion to duty, and all one craves for is a loved face, the warmth and wonder of a loving heart."

Because Blue Valentine seems to be the movie of the year for die hard romantics, and if more guys possessed just a teaspoon of the Gosling-charm we would be even less likely to end up facing the "kharmageddon". A word the creator describes as; "It's like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it's, like a serious bummer."

Reading the September issue of Scottish GLAMOUR, we find amusing, very real life oriented excerpts from mis-communication between the sexes;

From him
Subject: Last night
Great night. That gold dress is so sexy. Can't stop thinking about you.

From her
Subject: Re:Last night
You and I went out last week. I wore trousers.
-----

Her What an amazing night - thanks sooooo much. I've been waiting my whole life to meet someone like you. When are we next going out, handsome?

Him Was great, will get my PA to pencil in next free eve I have.
-----

You are so sexy, sometimes I think I never want to sleep with anyone else ever again.

We went to a seminar earlier this summer that stated the importance of feeling suprised, because all to often we are caught in the same routines and think we know it all. Imagine our suprise then when Stockholm decides to throw us a record breaking make out evening with the most beautiful boy we ever kissed, a second man that charmingly picked us up while we were unlocking the bike, who we then gave a ride to Nybroviken (since it had to be romantic even though it was a 5am pick up) and while we are debating which place to go back to (His argument: "Det är ingen bra idé. Jag kommer ha ångest oavsett om vi går hem till dig, mig eller om jag vaknar själv i morgonbitti") a new acquaintance from the previous Wednesday night gives us a ring and wonders if he can come over. "Well, of course, see you in twenty minutes!" Turns out though, that mediocre things don't come easy. Seven (incoming) phone calls and two and a half hours later, he eventually shows up, having spoiled all chances of getting laid. Our hugs not drugs policy required an explanation, and resulted in a confession: apparently, taking your friend's ADHD medication slows down your mental capacity and clearly leads you to completely misinterpret the term booty call.

Needless to say, we woke up as the big winners. Or maybe it is just true, that blondes really do have more fun.

Todays newspaper had a interview with a 62-year-old woman looking for love. It is part of a series called Lust and Desire 50+ and went under the headline "Unga män på nätet vill bara ha sex". Our top three favorite quotes from this piece of deep digging journalism are as follows;

Marianne har nog dejtat hundratals män från nätet vid det här laget, tror hon. I princip har det bara resulterat i lika många kaffe latte på olika kaféer. [That's a lot of coffee]
/.../
– Attraktion fanns, men sexuellt blev det en katastrof.
I hans huvud fanns inget annat än att pumpa in och ut.
/.../
Jag blir trött och deprimerad av att inte kunna träffa en riktig själsfrände, säger Marianne.

We wish Marianne good luck and would like to point out that the key to happiness is first and foremost to fall in love with yourself. And believing that the children are our future.

In business class we learnt that opportunity is always knocking, but are you listening? The art of making out is indeed very much about seizing opportunities, something that might explain why we are more compatible with the entrepreneurial Americans.
Swedes however, do not see the clear sequence of events;

a) After jitterbugging and slow dancing to Ray Charles and Love Will Tear Us Apart, the most natural thing is of course to sit down and make out, not complain about being dizzy, excuse yourself to use the men's room and then disappear.
b) Or after giving us a bike ride across town while the summer rain is pouring down, you might want to share a kiss in the midnight darkness instead of just waving good-bye and jumping into a taxi cab.

Another way of putting it is like advertising guru Paul Arden;
"Don't look for the next opportunity.
The one you have in hand is the opportunity."

Shy/lame/wonderful people everywhere, take note.

We just finished Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being and let us share a few of the more memorable quotes concerning our favorite topics;

Chance and chance alone has a message for us. Everything that occurs out of neccesity, everything expected, repeated day in and day out, is mute. Only chance can speak to us.
/.../

What is flirtation? One might say that it is behaviour leading another to believe that sexual intimacy is possible, while preventing that possibility from becoming a certainty. In other words, flirting is the promise of sexual intercourse without a guarantee.
/.../

Does he love me? Does he love anyone more than me? Does he love me more than I love him? Perhaps all the questions we ask of love, to measure, test, probe, and save it, have the additional effect of cutting it short. Perhaps the reason we are unable to love is that we yearn to be loved, that is, we demand something (love) from our partner instead of delivering ourselves up to him demand-free and asking for nothing but his company.

Because if there is one thing we have to pick, that we love the most, about New York City - it has to be the human capital. Especially the abundance of gorgeous music men with beards. This, in combination with sunny days and warm night is simply irresistible, and we are once again convinced that Heaven is right here on Earth.

Because it looks like you are in a Havana prison and we are always in the mood for cheering up hairy men with white teeth. Although, this might go against our new favorite t-shirt print;
"Make someone happy. Mind your own business."