I met my husband in age 31. Before that I had several un-pleasent relationships with both American and Chinese guys so I often think that getting myself a decent boyfriend is hard and probably a waste of my life. I stated myself as a woman who is not suitable for marriage. Maybe this has something to do with my profession. I'm a graphic designer who has work for a few print shops and ad firms before I have my own one-person design business. My work environment is often like a battle field, competitive and harsh for most of the time. There are basically two type of persons working at this field, one is creative and another is manipulative. And it is always the manipulative people dominate and manage the creative folks. 

If a designer can survive in his/her office he/she not only needs to be good in creative part but also need to be tough and clever enough to handle the manipulative supervisor and clients. After more than 5 years of working in the office I turned myself into an independent contractor and work at home. One of the reasons is that I want to try full-time writing Chinese as career; and another major reason is that I don't want to see myself turning into an ad firm MB -- Manipulative Bitch. 

It is sad and scary seeing someone near me become a MB. Such as it could only take 3 to 4 years to make a pure good looking college intern into a very capable marketing associate. In this job field if a woman is great then she will not avoid getting certain side affects that contain a strong MB quality. I don't blame on her, in fact, she has my truly sympathy because she was not even be able to be aware of that. 

I've aware that if a woman doing good in her job field might not having the same achievement in relationship. Taking my profession as an example, a good and surviving designer should have the following qualities: you must be creative (of course), fast pase, having sharp eyes and great taste, being sensitive to art and fashion trends, welling to work under extreme pressure and tight deadline, and the most important one, you need to be picky on your own work as a freaky fussy perfectionist.

So I have trained myself for many years to have the above qualities for my job. My work performance made my boss really happy so did to myself. For most of the time I totally forgot that I am applying the same standard in work to deal with my personal relationship. Therefore, I can't stand seeing a man working slow and unorganized, having less taste in dressing, talking non-sense and doesn't know basic art history (either Western or Oriental). In fact, all these MB type of qualities are extremely fatal in dealing with most relationship, even includes friendship. I ended up don't see any man fit my requirement or else he is gay.

There is a long period of time I truly believed in myself as an AM -- Asshole Magnet.  I am smart and talented but really out of luck getting myself a Mr. Right. I heard this phrase from a man who I went out with for very short time. He sadly described his past relationships with other women and he said to me that some of the women he went out with have defined themselves as an AM. I lately agreed with most of this man's ex-girlfriends and sign up myself to this "AM fan club". I started working overtime to make myself fully occupied because only this battlefield-like environment gives me all kinds of rewards and confidences. There is always a guarantee of winning in my job; in comparing with the unpredictable odds of successfully finding myself a decent man to be with.

Perhaps women in different career fields can also find the similar fatal quality like I did. I was luckily enough to discover such a problem by seeing one of supervisors in the office broke up with her fiance. This smart and tough woman handles most of the major accounts and she is great getting new clients from other ad firms. Many office colleagues gloated over her misfortune just because she was a MB in work. Everyone thinks she deserved to loss her fiance.

We Chinese said "The outsider sees most of the game. (旁觀者清)". One day in my age 30, I again reviewed all my past relationships with men, by installing a switch to shut down all my bias, perfectionistic, subjective, picky and fussiness, all the qualities that is good for work but could not be the best behavior for other situations. I then surprisingly found that few men who I've been with are actually not that bad. It was ME who did not aware of my Asshole Magnet Mode can be actually disabled by adding a few switches on my MB Mode from work. In the field of love and relationship, I need to have a wisdom shutting down something to receive a better result. I don't have to be a perfect person so does my opponent. That is the rule of the game.