Finding your Soulmate

This is an intensely personal story--it could hardly get more personal, actually. Because of that, I am going to take the liberty to change some names and obscure some information: while I feel perfectly comfortable telling stories on myself, I have no right to broach the privacy of others.
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About nine years ago, my marriage to my first wife, Toni, Nicki's mom, hit a wall. We'd both made mistakes, we each paid for them in different ways. They added up to an untenable situation. For almost two years I tried to make things work, and finally ran out of gas. I mean, I completely crashed and burned.For the first time in memory, I didn't even know who I was any more. Or what I wanted. Or what to do. I was utterly numb.
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The wall ha been hit between Thanksgiving and Christmas, the anniversary of my mother's death, and always a tough period for me. This just made things a lot worse. But I decided to give myself a week to come up with an answer, to decide what direction to move in. Many of you might have noticed how much easier it is to solve other people's problems, so I used that approach: What would I say if one of my students came to me with this problem?
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The Beauty-Power axis clearly states that our relationships are mirrors. Hmmm. I had said for years that our relationships say a lot about us. Hmmm. So I thought one of the smartest things, perhaps THE single smartest thing I ever thought: "I don't know who I am right now. But I know what I am attracted to. So this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to make a list of everything I'm attracted to. I am going to describe the perfect woman, without any compromises. Her beauty, intelligence, sensuality, warmth, emotional health, spiritual centeredness...everything. EVERYTHING my deepest heart desires. Then, I am going to go out and find the woman who comes the closest to what I've described--whether she's married or not (!), sit her down, and ask her what she wants in a man. If I've made my description carefully enough, and chosen carefully enough, whatever she describes is what I want to be--because, in my heart of hearts, what I want is to be a man who hcan have a woman like THAT. And we can have anything that we mirror."
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Needless to say, one of the most frightening things I've ever done, as well. What if she just wanted a billionaire? Well, then, she doesn't really match what I had on the list, now would she? A woman attracted to a man with ambition, intelligence and success is onething. But to put a dollar amount on it was another. So I quieted my fears and put my plan into action...

More later.