{"id":10196,"date":"2018-06-01T06:00:58","date_gmt":"2018-06-01T10:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/?p=10196"},"modified":"2018-05-28T06:20:21","modified_gmt":"2018-05-28T10:20:21","slug":"looking-perfect-mate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/2018\/06\/looking-perfect-mate.html","title":{"rendered":"Wishing for The Perfect Mate"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-10197\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/258\/2018\/05\/woman-3187620_1280-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"woman-3187620_1280\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" \/>Wishing\u00a0for the perfect mate? Well there is good news and bad news.<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s the bad news first. According to a study at the University of Gothenburg and University of Oxford, men want attractive young women and women want older men with resources. Yes, the Hollywood stereotype of the trophy wife who marries for money and security was found to hold true when 400 personal ads in newspapers and on Web sites were reviewed. I suppose this is good news for attractive, young women who don\u2019t mind marrying a father figure or someone who can\u2019t relate to their generation. Yes, my bias is showing. And it shows because I hate the emphasis placed on marrying for youth and beauty and money. Both aren\u2019t exactly the building blocks of great marriages. One other point, a generation gap among couples is a risk for divorce as well.<\/p>\n<p>Now here\u2019s the good news. Even though you might think that the former James Bond, is your man, chances are, he\u2019s not available or interested. Instead, you\u2019ve married someone close to your age who has a similar economic status. He\u2019s not sweeping you away to tropical islands for weekends of fun, but working hard for the money (to quote disco queen Donna Summer). Your man isn\u2019t married to Scarlett Johansson\u00a0either. He got you\u2014someone he found attractive, compatible and works equally hard to provide a good life for your family.<\/p>\n<p>Bottom line, we might have Hollywood ideals but our realities are very different. We find people who love and work beside us, who are interested in us and fall in love. Our love choices typically find us and don\u2019t always make a lot of sense. So put down the tabloid and stop dreaming of George Clooney-he&#8217;s taken anyway. Look your partner lovingly in the face. Appreciate those imperfections\u00a0and dedication to providing what you need. It may not be storybook, but it can be good!<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wishing\u00a0for the perfect mate? Well there is good news and bad news. Here\u2019s the bad news first. According to a study at the University of Gothenburg and University of Oxford, men want attractive young women and women want older men with resources. Yes, the Hollywood stereotype of the trophy wife who marries for money and&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":419,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[913],"tags":[220,125,4219,4220],"class_list":["post-10196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-couple-relationships","tag-dating","tag-marriage","tag-mate","tag-spouse"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Wishing for The Perfect Mate<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/2018\/06\/looking-perfect-mate.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Wishing for The Perfect Mate\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Wishing\u00a0for the perfect mate? Well there is good news and bad news. Here\u2019s the bad news first. According to a study at the University of Gothenburg and University of Oxford, men want attractive young women and women want older men with resources. Yes, the Hollywood stereotype of the trophy wife who marries for money and&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/2018\/06\/looking-perfect-mate.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Doing Life Together\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:author\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/drlindamintle\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2018-06-01T10:00:58+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2018-05-28T10:20:21+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/files\/2018\/05\/woman-3187620_1280-300x200.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Linda Mintle\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@drlindamintle\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Wishing for The Perfect Mate","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/2018\/06\/looking-perfect-mate.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Wishing for The Perfect Mate","og_description":"Wishing\u00a0for the perfect mate? 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Dr. Linda\u2019s fun personality and expertise comes through whether she\u2019s helping her audience stress less or make peace with their thighs! Dr. Linda has her Ph.D. in Urban Health and Clinical Psychology and is a national expert on mental health. She has specialized in the treatment of eating disorders, anxiety, depression and pain management. With 30 years of clinical experience working with couples, families and individuals, she brings her common-sense approach to people who want to live in positive mental health. Dr. Linda is also a bestselling author with 21 book titles to her credit, a radio host of the Dr. Linda Mintle show, professor, national speaker, winner of the Mom\u2019s Choice Award, a national news consultant, featured writer for Beliefnet and hosts her own website. Her academic appointments keep her abreast of current research in her areas of expertise. Her media experience includes seven years as the resident expert for ABC Family\u2019s Living the Life television show and regular appearances on network television and radio. It is often said that being with Dr. Linda is like having coffee with a friend. She makes the complicated issues of relationships and mental health easy to understand and applicable to everyday living. The ease she has with people, coupled with her clinical training and experience makes her a sought-after speaker on college campuses, conferences and special events. Whether she is doing a TV skit with Tim Conway or discussing teen violence with Queen Latifa, Dr. Linda will entertain, educate and integrate faith and mental health in everyday living. Check out her latest book Hope and Healing for Anxiety, a whole-person approach to eliminate anxiety. .","sameAs":["https:\/\/drlindamintle.com\/","https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/drlindamintle\/","https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/drlindamintle\/","https:\/\/x.com\/drlindamintle"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/author\/lmintle"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/419"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10196"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10196\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10198,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10196\/revisions\/10198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}