One thing I do know is that every man I end up in a long term relationship with--meaning more than a month--is better than the last one. I know this has something to do with the work I'm doing on myself. It's also a very slight comfort if there's a breakup.

I'm studying psychology too, but maybe I'm just open to a broader range of quirks. I like 'em interesting ;D

> Good self-esteem opens up a new dating pool. A better one. <

Absolutely.
A happy, self-confident woman who is clear on her wants, needs, and boundaries is not only attractive as hell, she is also bound to very low on relationship drama.

Aschleigh - "But I'm studying to be a psychologist , so maybe I'm looking for maladies."

I'm not sure what you mean by "maladies" - do you mean mental illness involving chemical imbalances or your basic neurosis? I'd assume neurosis so I'll proceed under that assumption (please correct me if I'm making asses out of either of us! :-).

Quite possibly you're actively looking for maladies but you're probably just more aware of them than you were before so you see what used to be invisible to you. I've yet to meet anyone who's totally free from neurosis - plenty who claim they are but they're usually hiding more than those of us who aren't ashamed to be human!

It's also relevant to remember that relationships are about the dynamics between the people involved - it's never just the one person who's engaged in the neurotic dance or dysfunctional but the meeting of complimentary neurosis that gets the flames dancing. While I don't buy into the whole wishful thinking, magical aspect of "the law of attraction", certainly we choose relationship dynamics that are familiar or that we feel we deserve (even if we think we deserve better). From my perspective, it actually has less to do with "laws of attraction" and mainly to do with making choices. It's not so much that stupid, dysfunctional guys will stop hitting on us simply because we've increased our self esteem, it's just that we stop finding them as attractive and responding to them if we have healthy self esteem and have resolved the relationship issues we inherited from our families. Also, we're more likely to be open to people that we wouldn't have noticed or responded to before we resolved our own issues because they didn't fit into our "type" or comfortably into our own neurotic pattern.

>"Good self-esteem opens up a new dating pool. A better one."

I totally agree, too.