What You Must Do If You Want to Meet the Person You'll Marry (feat. Ideal Type Design User Guide)
In the last column I already talked at length about why Ideal Type Design matters,
so this time I want to show you how to actually do it.
If any readers don't yet know what Ideal Type Design is or why it matters, I'd recommend reading the previous column first.
Why do Ideal Type Design?
Let me say it once more: the biggest purpose of Ideal Type Design is "saving time."
Without an Ideal Type Design, you have to figure people out by meeting them.
For example, let's imagine we look at the menu at burger joint A, and the menu is text only, with no pictures.
The reason we look at a menu is to use our imagination to guess what each dish might taste like. But at burger joint A, since the menu is only described in words, the only way to find out what something tastes like is to actually eat it.
On the other hand, say we go to burger joint B, and this place's menu has photos, lists which bun, patty, and vegetables are used, and even describes what each burger tastes like.
So what happens when we look at burger joint B's menu? Even without eating anything, we can experience each dish in our minds through the photos and information provided, and that lets us make a far more satisfying choice, right?
It's the same thing. If you build a detailed Ideal Type Design, you can "pass" on people who don't seem right for you just from their profile.
That's why Ideal Type Design isn't something you do once and walk away from; it needs to be continuously updated.
Say a friend wants to set you up with someone and sends you their profile. You then put that profile next to the Ideal Type Design you prepared in advance and compare: if they meet your ideal-type criteria, you meet them, and if not, you don't.
The thing is, most of us tend to give extremely idealistic answers to the question "What's your ideal type?"
"Someone over 180 cm, warm, with a boyish face, and great conversational chemistry."
So let me flip the question around. Why would a person with those qualities want to meet you?
Not many of you will be able to give a clear answer to that question.
Ideal Type Design is the work of building an answer to that question.
Finally, if we just design our ideal type in detail, will we then be able to meet the person we want?
Of course not. There's no way your ideal type is going to appear in front of you while you sit at home.
In the end, once you've drawn a clear, concrete picture of your ideal type, you have to go to the places where that ideal type shows up often and in numbers.
Figuring out where you need to go to meet your ideal type is part of "Ideal Type Design" too.
How to use the Ideal Type Design sheet
Alright, everyone! Now it's your turn to try Ideal Type Design yourself!
First, shall we take a look at the template below together?
Download the sheet, fill it in as you read along below, and it'll help a great deal.
Section 1: My attractive qualities
One thing to keep in mind when writing down your attractive qualities is that you shouldn't just list your strengths one after another;
you need to divide them into categories first.
The categories can be external, internal, and situational qualities.
External: your looks and physical characteristics.
Internal: your personality, temperament, and values.
Situational: family background, education, credentials, and so on.
When filling in the external and internal items, what matters is that you don't record only your strengths, but your weaknesses too.
For example, if you write "I have very sensitive senses," that could be seen as a weakness by one person and a strength by another.
Someone might think, "Having sensitive senses means they're perceptive, and they'll be as attentive to others as they are sensitive themselves,"
while someone else might interpret it differently: "A sensitive person probably wouldn't suit easygoing me."
What you consider a weakness can be a strength to someone else.
So let's record all of our traits as they are, without prejudice.
When filling this in, the situational section in particular probably had you wondering what on earth you're supposed to write.
For the situational part, you need to write down concrete circumstances: from your family's financial situation and your parents' retirement preparedness to family medical history.
Why go into this much detail? Because when it comes to marriage, these situational qualities are factors that absolutely have to be considered.
Section 2: What I want to give & Section 6: What they want to receive
Why are these two bundled together?
Because what you want to give your ideal type and what they want to receive have to line up.
If you only ever one-sidedly provide what you want to give,
your ideal type won't feel any particular desire to be with you.
So these are grouped together so that you can identify the strengths and weaknesses of what you can offer that person,
and see at a glance the direction for reinforcing the strengths and shoring up the weaknesses.
Section 3: Who falls for me
Through the steps above, this is now the section where you define what kind of person would fall for you.
"I have these attractive qualities; what kind of person would fall for someone like me?"
Many readers will write something wrong here, along the lines of
"I'm empathetic and a good listener, so I think someone with a lot of emotional wounds would fall for me."
Why is that answer "wrong"? Is the person you actually want to meet someone with a lot of emotional wounds? No, right?
A correct example would be: "Because I'm empathetic and a good listener, I think a talkative person, or someone chatty who loves to tell stories, would fall for me."
That's how you need to describe the traits of the person you want to meet.
Section 4: Who I fall for
Just as with your own attractive qualities, in this section you need to write the traits the person you'd fall for would show, divided into external, internal, and situational.
Let me show you an example of the most common mistake people make here.
"My ideal type is a business owner who is devoted to their work and earns a high income to match.
Personality-wise, I'd like them to be family-oriented, so they can spend a lot of time with the family."
How does that sentence strike you?
Would a business owner who is passionate about their work really show a family-oriented personality and try to secure lots of time with the family?
Of course, it's not that such a person doesn't exist anywhere in the world.
But we can't let the many other people we could be with slip by while waiting only for someone that rare.
Rather than one-sidedly listing everything you'd like, you need to describe a person who can actually exist in reality.
They aren't unicorns from a fantasy.
If it's hard to tell which traits can coexist and which can't, one approach is to start by setting priorities.
Once you've clearly settled on "this is the one thing I can't give up," you become able to let go of the rest decisively.
Section 5: What I want to receive & Section 7: What they want to give
The thing to consider here is when what you want to receive is more than what the other person wants to give.
If that's the case, you need to raise the bar for your ideal type.
Because it means you want a lot, and you want someone who can give that much.
But when you raise the bar for your ideal type that way, Section 6, what they want to receive, naturally rises too, right?
Which in the end raises the level of what you want to give as well.
Everything influences everything else like this, so continuously balancing all of it as you write is the core of Ideal Type Design.
And once all of this is complete?
You need to go where there are lots of people with the qualities you're looking for, right?
Going around to places where you can assume people who are on your wavelength gather, such as various hobby groups, lectures, and paid classes,
and looking for someone who matches your ideal type: that's what you need to do in the final stage of Ideal Type Design.
Of course, even if you don't go to those places yourself, having a matching expert who knows these traits and matches you accordingly
would be the icing on the cake.
If both people have done their Ideal Type Design, each can find a partner who meets their criteria and can adjust to the other.
What's more, because Ideal Type Design has already given you self-awareness, there are fewer cases of unreasonable demands or trouble arising.
At Honza, we actually use Ideal Type Design to match people with partners who meet their specific needs.
If you feel lost doing Ideal Type Design on your own, or if you've done it but just can't figure out where someone like that might be,
please use the link below to get matched with someone who's truly right for you!
