Speaker 1: Try engage the person's character, not their personality which is different. Their personality is the mask that they wear, how they appear in social situations. You want to look at what's underneath that, all of their character. What are the qualities that you want to find in somebody that could be like a lifelong partner for you or something that you could have a relationship for more than a few months, perhaps several years, maybe for the rest of your life? It's an extremely great question. It also really much depends on the individual and who you are. And there's never one answer for everyone. When we first get interested in someone, when we first fall for someone, it can often be a bit deceptive. We're charmed by their personality, by their looks, by their appearance, by how they certain things that are in essence a little bit superficial. And when you first meet somebody, they're not laying all their cards on the table. They're trying very hard to impress you, to please you. So all the other aspects of their personality that they may be a little bit ashamed of, that aren't so great, they're working hard to disguise it. So you're kind of lured into getting into a relationship with this person, but you don't really know who they are. You don't really know their secrets, their shadow side, their darkness. And then you get involved with them, and then it comes out, and they grate you, they irritate you, and you break off the relationship. So you have to be able, if you are in that situation where you're looking for a long-term relationship, to look below the surface, to try and gauge the person's character. Not their personality, which is different. Their personality is the mask that they wear, how they appear in social situations. You want to look at what's underneath that, all of their character, how strong they are. Whether they're a person who shares your basic values about life, who has a kind of inner strength. A very important quality is, can this person take criticism at all, right? So if you're in a relationship for several years, inevitably, there are going to be things that grate on you, and you're going to want to tell them what you don't like. There are people out there that can't take any kind of criticism. The slightest put down, and they explode, they get outraged, and they get almost violent sometimes. You can't be in a relationship if it's someone that you can't criticize or tell that this is behavior that bothers you, right? So you have to be able to gauge that, and you have to be very aware of some of the underlying qualities that people have. You can notice, if they're hypersensitive, if you ever say the slightest thing that's actually quite simple and basic, but they take offense at it, they take offense too easily, that should be a sign of, damn, I can't be with that person for very long because they're going to be offended constantly, and I won't be able to tell them what I truly feel, right? So, and if someone is just bursting with all kinds of insecurities, you're going to be spending your life trying to assuage their insecurities. So you want to look under the hood. You want to see the underlying strength of that person's character. And I think of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who, when he was a young man, was very handsome, very wealthy. There were all of these beautiful women that wanted to have him propose marriage to. And he ended up choosing Eleanor Roosevelt, who was considered to be kind of the ugly duckling of all the people in their circle. And she wasn't ugly, but she wasn't one of these beauties like these other women. He chose her because of her character, because she was strong, because she was intelligent, and because he could imagine, this is a very important thing, he could imagine having a conversation with her 10 years down the line and not being bored. So this is something that I think is really important, is the superficial things, the sexual attraction, which isn't totally superficial, but can be, the kind of things that grab you initially, aren't necessarily the things that are going to last over the course of years. And you want to be able to think, can I talk to them about subjects that interest me? Are they able to surprise me? Or have I heard all of their ideas at the end of two days? Do they keep repeating the same stories over and over again? Am I bored? Or can I imagine talking to this person at the breakfast table in 10 years and still being interested in them? Do we share a similar sense of humor? Having a similar sense of humor is more important than you having the same political values that you're both Democrats or Republicans. Because being able to laugh at the same things and have a similar kind of sense of humor and things that amuse you is extremely important. It's something that will help you last over years and years and will be a connection, a bond. But the main thing that's going to wear on you, is going to break the spell, is that the other person becomes too familiar. You know everything about them, right? At the end of a year, there are no more surprises left. They're too familiar. Your mind starts to wander. Maybe there's somebody out there who's more interesting. So think of somebody who has a little element of mystery to them. You don't completely know who they are. And what you'd suspect that they might be hiding is very interesting. They have depths that you hadn't imagined, right? They're intelligent. You can talk about things that interest you, that excite you, and there's a connection there. And you're sometimes surprised by what they say. So the main thing is, is not so much the physical stuff, which is important, and if it completely goes away after a couple of years, then it's going to hurt the relationship. I don't mean to deny that. But the ability to be surprised by someone, to continue to have conversations with them, to be able to share similar stories and senses of humor, to have a similar taste in animals. I know that sounds really, really weird. But I know personally, as a cat person or a person who loves animals, I could never be in a relationship with someone who doesn't love animals. I don't care if it's cats, dogs, cockroaches, rats, whatever. They have to love animals. So there are certain essential values that you have that mark you as an individual, whether it's your love of animals, whether it's your love of outer space and UFOs, or I don't care what it is, things that excite you. If the other person doesn't share that at all, it's going to be really hard to maintain an interest in them over a long period of time. So these are the things that I think that are extremely important to go into a long-term relationship.