The forks in the road (updated at the end)

Last night, the guy met a couple of my friends for the first time. They loved him. Lots of talk of double dates happened. He really, really likes me. I like him a lot and in certain areas (intelligence, kindness, capability), he is exactly what I'm looking for. But in other areas, he is not what I am looking for and yesterday, it became crystal clear to me that those aspects of him constituted deal breakers.

That was just an awful realization- I ended up staying wide awake most of the night and in the morning I called my mom and told her I was going to break up with this guy. That did not go that well, it was a very emotional conversation and comes down to the crux of the issue-I have a shopping list of qualities that may be very hard to find in one guy. My mom called it the "Draupadi" complex- Draupadi is principal female lead in the epic Hindu myth, the Mahabharata. In her previous life, she  prayed to a Shiva and asked for a man who was best looking, the best warrior, the kindest man with the best temperament etc.  So in the story, in the current reincarnation, by happenstance and accident, she is trapped into marriage with 5 men, each of whom  embodies one of the 5 qualities she asked for. Everybody involved is aghast and start trying to find a way out of it, but the god Krishna shows up and says, well, THIS is the boon you asked for, so now you have to accept it and live with the consequences-- the Mahabharata is all about teaching life lessons through very interesting and dramatic fiction, and this particular lesson is, you cannot have everything.

I know very well that finding a guy with my laundry list is hard, and while there are men who are good looking, nice, smart and kind, they are extremely few and far between and many people are either intelligent kind people but unexciting physically, or are good-looking but rat bastards (met too many of those recently).

But still, I find myself unable to compromise.

I'm going to break up with this guy this week. In doing so, I literally feel like I'm at a fork in the road and I'm  deliberately choosing the much more difficult path to walk down-  but I cannot help but do it anyway.

I"m bone-deep comfortable with the idea of having a baby as a single mom. The many problems/challenges associated with this path do not scare/put me off at all. But having a mostly nice life with a nice, lovely man who falls short of certain standards I have? That generates a whole lot of negative feelings and a knee-jerk need to get out it now (it hit me like a ton of bricks yesterday) and I'm kicking myself for that. I wish so hard that I could be happy with this guy. But how can you help the way you feel and react? You have to be true to your nature, even if your nature is that of a bloody idiot, apparently. Plus there is the guilt.  I'm so sorry to hurt this man, but better now than much later.

Update: I broke up with him on 2 days after writing this post. I really want to thank all of you for your insightful, kind comments. Many people bought up the point (and its a really valid one) that you can't lead with a list, you have to take what you get. I agree 100%. The caveat is, you have to be happy/content with the overall package, even if you wish some or many little things could be different. The problem was, staying in there, with the factors I did not find ideal, was actively making me unhappy and it was a situation that, had I buried that unhappiness, would have only gotten progressively worse. So here I am, 1 week later- I miss many aspects of him, I think about him often, but I'm profoundly relieved that I ended things, and know that I made the right decision for me. The only thing I wish I could change is my innate personality, but I have to accommodate who I am, no matter the price.