Look, I’m a Virgo, right? And 2022 was just… a complete disaster. I mean, relationship-wise, I was just bouncing off walls with total chaos. By the time the calendar flipped to 2023, I figured, enough of this garbage. I treat my work life like a massive, complex project plan, so why in the hell was I letting my love life be so free-form and sloppy? I decided finding a decent match was going to be my Q1, maybe stretch into Q2, high-priority deliverable. It wasn’t about being desperate; it was purely about efficiency and process control. That’s the only way my brain handles stuff I want to get right.
The Initial Setup: Defining the System Requirements
First thing I did, I grabbed a thick notebook. Yeah, a real paper one. I wasn’t going to leave this to chance or some broken app algorithm. I spent a whole weekend just hammering out the actual specifications for a potential partner. Not the fuzzy, romantic nonsense, but the hard, practical requirements. I ended up with five non-negotiable criteria, the system checks that had to pass:
- Must have a stable job and clear financial goals. No “influencer” dreams or vague business plans. I was done supporting adult children.
- Must have actual, real-world hobbies, not just scrolling through feeds. Something they actually build or learn.
- Must be able to properly communicate a problem, not shut down and go silent for three days. We needed a reliable communication protocol.
- Must prefer actual history books or documentaries over crazy YouTube conspiracy theories and that kind of noise. I need logic, not rumors.
- Must live within a reasonable driving distance of my place. I wasn’t doing long distance again for some digital stranger.
It sounds cold, I know, but I was tired of wasting my time and energy. This was the filtering system. Anything that failed two or more points? Immediate termination of the chat. No gray area. I was executing ruthlessly.
The Execution: App Grinding and System Debugging
I signed up for three different dating apps. Not just one. I wanted to cast a wide net and then see which platform actually had the highest signal-to-noise ratio. What a nightmare. It was worse than tracking down one missing semicolon hidden deep inside a massive old code base. I was constantly hitting errors.
The first month was just a lot of mindless swiping and very shallow initial text exchanges. My strategy was brutal and time-boxed: I aimed for five quality conversations a week, and one actual coffee or drink date every weekend. And here’s the most Virgo part: I logged everything. Yes, I had a spreadsheet. I recorded the date, the location, the exact cost, the duration, and a one-sentence summary of the outcome. Most of those summaries were gut-punchingly accurate:
- “Talked about his awful ex for 45 minutes. Dumped immediately.”
- “Showed up 30 mins late, forgot his wallet at home. Failed basic criteria. Terminated.”
- “Kept making excuses for being lazy. Unacceptable work ethic. Closed connection.”
I remember one specific week in late February, I went on four straight dates. All were total disasters. One person tried to mansplain my own job back to me for an hour and a half. Another one looked absolutely nothing like their photos. It felt like I was running obsolete software and constantly running into fatal runtime errors. I was honestly ready to scrap the whole damn project. But then I looked at my log. I had only executed 15 dates. Not enough data points to call the project a failure. I pushed myself. I had to continue the testing phase.
The Unexpected System Upgrade
Around Date 25, just when I was about to give up on App C, the clunky one I hated, I met someone. The conversation was just… easy. No struggle. But here’s the kicker: she only met four of my five criteria. She was still figuring out the financial stability thing, which technically violated my first rule. My carefully designed system flagged her as a near-miss, a sub-optimal choice, yet my gut was absolutely screaming at me to keep the line open.
That’s when I realized the hard truth: I had created a perfect filter for paperwork and documentation, but not for a dynamic, messy human being. My Virgo side, the part that demands order, structure, and perfection, had actually been busy creating its own personal prison. I was so obsessed with managing the process that I almost missed the actual variable that mattered most: the simple, undeniable feeling. I had almost terminated the process because the requirements document wasn’t 100% satisfied. What an absolute joke.
We kept seeing each other. I stopped logging the dates entirely. I deleted the spreadsheet from my hard drive. I kept the other apps active for another week, just to prove a point to myself that I was in control, but I sent maybe three total messages, and then I just stopped looking at them. The whole rigid system I built, the entire Q1 deliverable mindset? It was just a scaffold. It got me moving and focused, but it definitely wasn’t the final product. 2023 ended up being the year I learned my meticulous planning can only push me to the starting line. It can’t run the actual race for me. The ‘match’ I found wasn’t a perfect checklist item; it was the person who made me realize I needed to throw the checklist away entirely. That is the real lesson I took away from the whole ordeal. Sometimes the right solution looks like a major, unscheduled deviation from the original project plan. And honestly? It’s been absolutely fantastic.
