While sitting home on yet another Friday "date night" I flipped in an old SATC and watched an interesting episode "The Caste System." It made me wonder do these rules apply here? Do we have to date within our own castes? Can relationships really be complete when the participants come from 2 very differnent places? Now before all of you start jumping on me about equality blah blah blah! This is a post about contemporary cultural anthropology-not who is superior to whom. Remove this bias from your answers-or better yet set things in another context i.e. a martian lawyer and an earthling shop clerk.

I pondered these thoughts on Saturday night while looking across at "Ma Bell" and really observed the couples there. After the drinking and screwing what did these guys actually have to say to each other? The motions of happiness seemed to be in evidence but every so often their eyes would just wander away into a blank void that I can not help but feel looked like the stare of loneliness and longing on both parties?

Conventional wisdom in pairing couples is common everything. In cultures where marriages are arranged by the parents, success may be attributed to the parents knowing the common ground better than the testesterone driven youngsters.

Having found few potential partners that in any way resembled me or my background, thank goodness, my partners and my efforts have always been directed to bridging the gap.

If you like younger, look for a younger that likes older. Simple huh?

If you like intellectual challenge from a partner, you know what to look for. I don't, since intellectual challenge is not what I seek in a relationship with a partner.

Warm, loving, family oriented, stable, kind, considerate, true blue, dependable, etc. etc. is what I look for so actors, politicians etc. are not where I look. etc.

What others think of me or my partner has little importance to me, so if your reference is to "true caste", I pay no attention since society is what establishes a caste system.

Having not grown up in a family enviroment, I am somwhat of a loner and thus interaction with a partner is not a high priority, although my parnter and I spend most of the day together, although not always in the same rooms, and rarely doing the same things. Thus we are mentally active, but not necessarily mentally interactive. There are times when there is nothing to be said between us, and we have been together long enough so we don't feel compelled to communicate verbally all the time. Someone observing us in a restaurant or elsewhere, at such times, might conclude, as I have done in the past when viewing couples so not engaged, "how sad, they have nothing to say to each other". I was wrong then.

Now I know conversation is over-rated, when nothing is being said. By the way, I don't like "chat 'em ups" or mindless coctail chatter, either.

In conclusion, my spin on your post is know yourself, "to thine own self be true", and follow the lesson of the turtle, "you don't move forward without sticking out your neck".

Good luck in finding love, life is emptier without it. Apologies if I have missed the point, as I probably haven't seen the Sex in the City epidsode to which you refer.