The rich are different. Their wants are very high maintenance.

In the saying of Patti Stanger—“The rich are different. Their wants are very high maintenance. They’ll pick eye color and hair color, all the way down to what she does for a living, what school she went to. Their list can be extremely long. But at the end of the day, dating is dating, because they’re human beings.”—we hear an old truth wearing modern clothes. Status may gild the cup, but the thirst inside is the same water-hunger of the heart. The sentence rises like a temple column: ornate at the base with preferences and pedigree, yet bearing a single roof—the shared human need to be seen, to be chosen, to belong. Wealth may multiply choices, but it cannot purchase the quiet recognition that says: “You, and not the crowd.”

The ancients would nod. They knew that ornament is not essence. To demand high maintenance particulars—eye color, hair color, the precise crest of a family, the seal of what school—is to mistake the map for the country. A person is not a catalogue page. The soul does not disclose itself to inventory; it yields to attention. And yet, Stanger’s wisdom is not a scold. It is a lantern: even those with the longest list must walk by the same light as the humble—risk, curiosity, patience, truth. The road of dating is dating for all, because all are human beings.

Consider the story of a king who shopped for love like a merchant appraising silks. Henry VIII, in a gallery of portraits, weighed lineage, dowry, and the painted gloss of hair color and eye color. The canvas of Anne of Cleves pleased his conditions; the woman herself did not. The crown could command a marriage, but not conjure affection. Here wealth inflated the list and with it the distance between expectation and reality. The lesson is not merely royal gossip; it is geometry of the heart: the longer the ruler of demands, the more likely it is to measure a phantom.

Yet another tale, gentler, from a harbor town: a wealthy heiress with a parchment of criteria—what school he must have attended, what he does for a living, the gloss of his shoes, the slope of his handwriting. She met a man who failed her every column, a carpenter who repaired the chair she wobbled upon during a storm-lit charity gala. He listened more than he spoke. He remembered her mother’s name. In time, she folded the parchment and used it to brace that same chair: the list still had use, but love sat higher than it. She learned what Stanger declares: beneath the velvet, the pulse; beneath the high maintenance design, the durable warmth of shared humanity.

There is something heroic in this humility. To put down the jeweled measuring stick is not to lower one’s standards; it is to refine them. Choose the virtues that weather: honesty, steadiness, kindness, teachability, reverence for truth. Keep a few non-negotiables; release the rest. The ancients would say: pick character like you would pick a ship—by the soundness of the wood and the seam, not by the color of the sail. Let the wind of fate fill it; let daily effort steer it.

So, what shall we do? First, shorten the list until it exposes your true values. Ask: which items protect my future, and which only flatter my vanity? Second, replace filters with questions. Instead of “Did they go to what school?” try “How do they learn?” Instead of “What she does for a living,” ask “How do they carry responsibility, and do they serve well?” Third, practice the discipline of encounter: three generous dates, each devoted to one task—listening, observing, and telling the truth about yourself. Fourth, keep a small ritual after each meeting: write one sentence about how you felt in their presence, not about their pedigree. This trains the eye to see the person, not the brochure.

Finally, remember: dating is dating—a mortal art of two imperfect pilgrims, whether cloaked in ermine or denim. The banquet hall and the corner café host the same drama: two human beings attempting to exchange fear for trust. Walk into that drama with courage and with softness. Let your preferences advise, not rule. Let curiosity sit at the head of the table. And when you are tempted to add one more condition—eye color, hair color, the precise lattice of résumé lines—whisper the wiser condition under all others: “Let them be kind, and let me be kind in return.”