How do you see the opposite gender?

"Oh, I like him. But he's too much", my friend said to me one day in utter exasperation and honest confusion.

We were having coffee in one of my favorite coffee spots, spending our lazy Monday afternoon away as if we have no obligation to fulfill. I just came back from a camping trip and I needed some resemblance of home to feel grounded again. So we each took a short walk from our respective place to the little cafe in the corner, where beautiful men make beautiful coffee and I can listen to beautiful music.

I shook my head, I leaned back on my chair, and I laughed at her statement. Her head turned sharply, and she looked at me with a bewildered look on her face. "What, why?", as usual she gets fidgety at my observation of her behaviour.

"True love is a strange and misleading notion, don't you think?" I folded my arms around my body, bracing for the debate to ensue. "Where do we get all these ideas when we meet the right person, he or she is going to be perfect and everything is going to work out by itself?". I ended my questions with a smile. I wasn't sure whether she was going to take my arguments as a head-on battle or throw her arms in the air with exasperation.

When she did the latter, I continued, "And what is it with us wo/men and our naive but persistent expectations of the other gender?" "I like him, but he's boring." "I like him, but he's too much." "I like her, but she's clingy." "I like her, but she's not spontaneous enough."

I breathed deeply at the end of my sentence, consumed in return by my own frustration.

Truly, I'm getting tired of looking at people through gender and sex telescope. When we are continuously looking at a person simply because s/he is a wo/man and when we are judging them based on whether or not they fit in the fe/male mould society has given us, we are simply admitting ourselves to the mere boundaries of our primal instinct.

Why do we seek companionship? Because we are one sex and they are the other? Because we are constantly bombarded by the thoughts of how hopeless we are alone and therefore we are always desperately in need of someone else to help us get through our difficult life? Why?

It is evident to me, when we constantly look at the other gender as potential mating match - we fail to look at them as individuals. And what a waste it is.