That perfect person- the perfect spouse- the one person you always dream of, that paragon lost in a sea of hopelessly average and flawed runner-ups, does not exist.

That has been the flavor of my most recent train of thought.

Looking at the idea from a realistic stand-point, there are a number of problems with the theory of my "one true love":

Are all these characteristics I have in mind realistic for one person to have? Would it be reasonable to conceive of a person with all these perfect attributes? If it is reasonable, a person ascribed with the characteristics I hold dear would be very, very scarce; what are the chances that this person lives in the United states? In Utah? In Layton? I would have to travel to many nations for many years just to hope to improve my chances of getting a glimpse of this perfect person. Moreover, how old would this person be? What would be the probability that they would be within a relationship-functional age range?

On the other side of the coin, it seems improbable that only one person in the entire world has qualities I admire. If there were only one person, then the probability that I'd meet them- short of divine intervention- is virtually zero.
Furthermore, as there are a finite amount of optimal candidates, these candidates would vary from each other by a difference in the optimization of their qualities. This makes the window of mate optimization pretty relative. And as there are a finite amount of optimal mates, there is an even bigger pool of "nearly" optimal mates who lack one or two attractive characteristics, and even more in a pool of mates lacking two or three characteristics etc.

If I WERE in the same room as this person, would I even recognize them? Personally, I have never encountered nor heard a genuine tale of "love at first sight". "Love" to me is a deep and profound connection and is a product of time; anything else would be infatuation or "lust at first sight" so I suppose if this person was absolutely gorgeous, they might strike my eye readily, but for all the wrong reasons.

Assuming I was able to recognize this person, how would I know that I am everything that THEY want? Would I be comparable to that person at all? What if they did not want a relationship or were unavailable?

Faced with all these realizations, it becomes apparent that there is no one person on earth that one needs to search diligently for because that person is just an ideal: a prototype for you to compare possible mates against, not a reality. And even if you did find person who exists only in your mind, there's still the very real possibility that they would not find you to be what they are looking for.

So that means that that which is left is a group of people who fall pretty close to your prototype but are in the end not "perfect". Ergo, there is an aspect of "settling" in even the strongest of relationships; however it goes without saying that the settling should be done reasonably without ignoring fundamental factors like fidelity and respect that would determine if the relationship can survive at all.

And honestly, the ideal of a one true love is a pretty romanticized idea (which I suspect are perpetuated by religious ideals surrounding marriage-without-divorce and monogamy).
It should also be noted that humans biologically were not meant to be monogamous. Even though there are indeed advantages to monogamy for progeny, it exists rarely in nature and it's definition follows more along the lines of "favored partner" rather than "exclusive partner".

Nevertheless, I would also say that just because we are forced to "settle", that "one-true-love" is a conditioned belief, and that even though we may be programmed biologically to do things that follow species-survivalist instinct,these are not excuses to cheat habitually; One may argue that part of being human is learning to understand the ethics behind our actions and restrain ourselves accordingly.

It is important to realize that monogamy is not for everyone but is still gratifying to those who want it.

There has been alot of ground broken for me recently surrounding these ideas that, up until recently, have been unimpeached. But in closing I have to remember that companionship is only one aspect of life, and I'm just a "kid". I've got to keep things in perspective.