We all know what happens when you head to the grocery store without a list. You end up impulsively grabbing items and leaving with a cart piled full of stuff you didn’t really need.
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While killing time in the back of a biology class during nursing school, a then 19-year-old Elena Murzello used this “grocery list” theory to create a list of characteristics she was looking for in a potential partner. What Murzello didn’t realize at the time was that this was the first of many “love lists” she would write – eventually leading her to author The Love List: A Guide to Getting Who You Want.
“Without a list, you base your purchases on how hungry you are and end up grabbing random items you don’t need, like pretzel-covered peanut-butter snacks,” writes Murzello in the book. “The reevaluation begins when you stare at your half-full grocery cart as you wait in line and realize that you don’t really need half the stuff that you put in your cart. More often than not, you forget the one thing you went shopping for in the first place because it wasn’t so apparent when you were browsing the shelves.”
The analogy makes sense. But applying it to her dating life wasn’t a success for Murzello the first time around.
Elena Murzello developed the “love list” as a tool to help people identify what they are looking for in a potential partner.
“I wrote 55 characteristics and it had everything from dark denim jeans, to straight teeth, to 5’11” to 6’3” … all this detail,” she told NBC News BETTER. “A month later I ended up meeting my boyfriend at the time and we had a lengthy 10-year relationship. It ended when he went to Vegas for a bachelor party and met a girl. Continue reading