Does the perfect wo/man exist?
...Well I could say no, because no matter how wonderful someone is there is always going to be something about that person that gets on your nerves. So if we are going to define perfect as objectively flawless, no, that person does not exist.
However, I would say perfection is a subjective thing. What I find attractive you may find annoying or even ugly and vice versa. I believe there are people out there who are perfectly suited for one another, not because they are both perfect individuals, but because they just seem to fit perfectly together, and if those same two people were with different partners it wouldn't work. I agree whole-heartedly that perfection is a journey and not a destination. I don't expect more from a man than what I can bring to the table. I'm still growing and learning and and the right man for me will have to be doing the same. It's like Lauryn Hill said, "Anything that's not growing is dead." A good relationship is when two people are able to continue growing in the same direction.
Discussions like this remind me of something a classmate's grandfather said when I was in college. He was saying that he enjoys talking with young people and he often talks to the young men and women in his church. He said they were talking about relationships and one young woman started making that old familiar complaint that we've all heard way too many times that there weren't any "good men" around. He said he didn't argue with her; he just told her okay, but when that good man shows up, what makes you so sure he's getting a good woman?
A lot of times we have this long list of attributes we expect our mates to have and we can't even live up to our own standards. When you meet that wo/man who has everything on your checklist will you have everything on their checklist? I read books and they say you should envision what you want in a mate, write it down, pray on it and be exact, etc. I can't be bothered with all that. Instead I write down the qualities that I admire in a person and then take a self-inventory and see how I am doing. When we fall into the trap of saying things like all men are dogs or all women are gold diggers we invite those negative experiences into our lives. When I was falling into a rut where I seemed to constantly attract the same type of men and go through similar drama in each relationship I had to do some self-examination. I can be honest and say that I found it difficult not to just label all men in one way and just say F it. It was a hard thing to do but I had to get a little distance from the situation and say okay what beliefs do I have and what behavior do I exhibit that keeps putting me in this situation and how can I work on changing these things about myself. It was much easier to just place the blame on the men in my life for the things they did and ignore my own culpability. It's easy to play the victim, but it's not always easy to recognize the ways we contribute to our own victimization.