Its good to have hard "nos" but you should never have hard "yeses". This looks an awful lot like one of those profile "looking for" lists on match or whatever, but rephrased to be pop-psychology compliant. Hmmm... maybe admin can add this list to the questions on this site. Then we will all agree on a whole bunch of stuff, all match a little bit more, and feel that much less unique. I mean, who doesn't want a partner who aides their growth process?
Highly intelligent.
Treats me with kindness and respect.
Physically fit with a healthy lifestyle.
Great sense of humor.
Good conversationalist.
Also loves hiking.
Those are all positive things, but you have no way of becoming aware of them until you have at least met the person several times in person for dates or meetings. Trading messages with them or even talking on the phone are still so indirect and impersonal that they really won't provide you any clues about these issues. Most people won't commit enough time and effort to seeing you with online dating until they have already decided from those initial screening phases like trading messages, phone calls, and a few in person dates or meetings that you are a keeper and someone they could see having sex with. In a nutshell, most people will be too guarded and not give you enough data to evaluate these issues until you have already dated them a few months and are in an exclusive relationship. So, to find out these things, it won't happen in the first place unless both they and you have become invested enough to date steadily for a while and make it exclusive. Either a mutually serious investment or no opportunity to find out this stuff about someone. By that time, most people are too emotionally invested to notice the red flags if they come up that late.
@Allamanda I get your point and I know what my needs are. But I garuantee you that, at least in my local area, if you try bringing up those kind of things early on in the dating process, like the first several times you see someone or, even worse, while you are trading messages or talking by phone after you connect and before you finally meet, you will scare off any potentially compatible women as you will come off too serious or desperate as a man. Maybe a woman could bring up those things early on and get away with it, but I know a man, at least in my situation, can't. Maybe because Iowa is a very traditional place and, even tho this view may be traditionalist and is not mine, it is the predominant culture here and I have to live with it or work around it in the dating game..unless I chose to date LD, which I won't...
@Allamanda I hear your point, but I've lived in Iowa my whole life. I know the culture here way better than an outsider and I am just being honest and realistic about what it's like in my area. You can either take my word on it or not and make of it what you will...A woman, in my local culture, can get away with being a lot more assertive and direct with men early in the dating process, and thus, be able to bring up and evaluate this stuff early. But if a man tries it, he will scare women away, as I described. I know this from experience......Of course, the woman will scare away some men too, but not if, as McSteven above said on another thread, she has an attractive photo, then the men will abide her aggressive approach and give her the data we both are after.