Here’s another joke Bob used to tell: a man, newly out of prison, sat down on a park bench in Miami next to a middle-aged Jewish woman. She looked sideways at him, noticed his scruffy beard, his new cotton slacks and his jiggling foot. “I haven’t seen you around here,” she said to him. 

“No,” he said, “I just got out of prison.”  

“Oh,” she said and fell silent a few minutes. Then she said, “What crime did you commit?”

The man looked at her, hesitated, and then after taking in a long breath said, “I chopped up my wife into pieces and mailed them to different parts of the country.”

There was a long pause from the woman, and then she said, “So! You’re single!!!”

Need shapes perception. The joke is an extreme example, but we do it all the time. You may be drawn to someone who loves children, because you’re longing to have one, and you gloss over the fact that the person already has three children from a previous marriage and an unpleasant ex-spouse who may be a problem later.  Maybe the person is charming but is always late or is great looking but spends too much time and money on appearance. You ignore those red flags because the most obvious things about the person are very attractive. The warning signs come back to haunt you later.

 It’s worth taking stock of what lurks in the shadows. A mother gave her daughter two pieces of advice when dating: believe what you see, and don’t expect it to change later. Wise woman.