Wait, was this a date? For the first fifteen minutes, I wondered if I had made a mistake. Come to think of it, her texts had been very eager. She was sitting very close to me and being chummy. I thought I was meeting to hang with a new friend, but had I misread her signals?

That was the first fifteen minutes. Eventually she indeed dropped something about an “ex husband”, so we were clear on that front. But over the next five hours, my thought process turned to, “Wow, why don’t I ever feel this connected to a guy on an early date? She’s so emotionally mature, and we have so much in common. Hmmm, if only she were male….” But even before the confusion was clarified, I decided that even if it were a date, I really liked this person–I would be open minded. 30d30d is about self-reflection and personal growth. Open mindedness is a must.

Sandy (the pseudonym I had coincidentally pre-assigned for my 8th date and a gender-neutral name) was absolutely wonderful. She was one of Xavier’s friends from Lake Date #3, one of the final 4 who stayed till we were nearly kicked out by police.

We are both: adventurous Americans; nonlinear renaissance career women with accomplishments across many domains; artistically inclined; highly self-reflective; in search of lasting relationships; motivated leaders who challenge the status quo of suboptimal organizational practice or governance. Yeah, that’s a mouthful of commonalities. It was incredible, for both of us. Thanks Xavier 😉

And we are both ice cream and nature lovers. So now, just a week later, we were meeting up to deepen our newly-found friendship over great ice cream in Prenzlauer Berg (I’m not looking up how to spell that but my guesses are slowly getting closer!). This would be followed by a brief bike-riding trek to a nearby lake for a picnic.

After some amazing rosemary lemon ice cream and a quick food stop, we laughed and chatted while rad-meandering the streets of Berlin, admired the fountain of the park, and eventually found a picturesque stopping point. We laid out the blanket and food, gossipped, shared stories.

The local “street” musician turned out to be a friend of hers, so our merry group grew to include a Chilean guitar player and two OBGYNs in training. We bonded well into pitch blackness and finally left sometime after midnight.

With Sandy, everything came so easily. Laughter, openness, joy, intellectual discussion, sharing pain, sharing dreams. I told her about Dora and my 30d30d challenge and she was enraptured. She opened up about her own personal challenges. We felt lucky to have found each other. She is accomplished, engaging, passionate, smart, dextrous, surprising, supportive, full of integrity. There was zero ego emoting from either of us. In the context of Tim Kelley’s ego vs. soul analogy in True Purpose, it truly felt like we were pure creatures of soul that night.

That’s what I got from our 5.5-hour “first date.”

Do I even know any guys as strong as she in all these dimensions? And how many of these criteria are truly important to me in my ideal life partner? Should I change my standards? It causes one to ponder…