At Three Day Rule, we work with many women who are smart, successful, and ambitious. We love working with them, and setting them up can be one of the most rewarding parts of our business.

But as a team of strong women ourselves, we’ve learned quite a bit about the type of match these women work best with, and often, our perspective surprises them.

Type A women know everything about their own businesses - they are experts in the medical field, or political pundits, or run their ad agency with ease. However, they aren’t love experts - we are. When we tell them that we might have an idea of a type of match they might be great with, they don’t always hear what we are saying. It can be a tough conversion, but it’s one we know we have to have.

Here’s the bottom line - strong women don’t necessarily match well with Type A men.

These women come to us and tell us they know exactly what they want - a man who makes $500k, who is really social, who is full of endless ambition. What they want, essentially, is to date themselves.

But what if they are looking for the wrong things? If a strong woman can support herself financially and make herself happy on her own, shouldn’t she look for someone who supports her in a different way? For example, if she makes $500k each year, why does she need a man who makes more than that? It’s not something that is missing from her life, and to be honest, that type of thinking is a bit outdated. Equating financial success with masculinity undermines everything women have worked to achieve. If you’re really social and have a million friends, do you really need a guy that is super social too? Is that a hole in your life? Not really, because your friends fulfill that part. You don't need a man to complete that part of you.

Finding a husband should be about figuring out what holes you have in your life. Not because you’re incomplete, but because you want someone who makes you even stronger. You want a partner, not a twin. There’s no point in dating your duplicate - in fact, that might even take away from everything you have accomplished.

On the flip side, we often hear from successful men that they aren’t looking to date themselves - they are looking for women who love them and are supportive. They are also looking to fill the holes in their life, and while they can certainly admire your ambition, that’s not what they are telling us to go out and find for them. We’re not saying power couples don’t exist, but that the best couples complement each other across a number of personality traits, and we do find that this realization can be more straightforward for men than it is for women.

Perhaps what strong women really are missing is someone who adores them and makes them dinner when they get home from a long day. Sometimes, women underestimate the power of a man who makes them laugh, or someone who is going to be a true partner in raising children. Or a man who loves you and accepts you for who you are, not just for the life you have made for yourself. Instead of insisting on a man who is just like you, embrace how gender roles are evolving, and be open to the man who is really right for you.

There is no such thing as a man who fulfills everything you are looking for. That’s not because you don’t deserve what you want - it’s because there is no such thing as perfection. When you craft your ideal mate in your mind, you imagine perfection, because no one imagines someone with flaws. You can predict what you’ll like about someone, but it’s much harder to predict their flaws, so in your mind, you just ignore them entirely. There is no such thing as your ideal man because men, like you, are human. They are real people, who aren’t perfect, who will need to be accepted for who they are.

When we work with strong women, we often try to open their eyes that they don’t need to date the male version of themselves - they need to date someone who adds love, support, and passion to their lives. It’s not always an easy conversation to have, but once women realize they are looking for a partner for life, not a partner for their law firm, it’s funny how love falls into place.