Misconceptions about Self

I'll start by giving you a piece of truth about myself.

I had always described myself as religious but not conservative. It was easy for me to make this assumption because:
A) I have very religious friends (and family), who I am comfortable around and noticed I adopt a lot of their religious point of views.
B) I have a number of non-religious, who'd fall under the radical/progressive-thinking category, whom I am also comfortable being around and do adopt many of their point of views
C) I do know some non religious but quite conservative people, who I don't necessarily like, am not comfortable around, nor enjoy their conversation, let alone point of views.
From there, I made a conclusion, that I am religious but not conservative, in the grand scheme of things.

The reason, I bring this up, is obviously, because it is important to me. I take religiousness/conservatism as some of my criteria for meeting/settling on my prince charming.

In theory, the perception we have of ourselves is fine, as long as it's getting you where you want in life. But, examining my choices of "potential beau" in the last few years, it hit me, that "hey, something's not right here". My choices don't reflect my perception of myself. So, a few weeks ago, I took a stand with myself, to investigate. And it hit me, I've made these perceptions a long time ago, things change, people change (i.e me), social circles change (i.e who i'm hanging out with), ...etc. Although, after examination, I still consider myself religious but not conservative, I think I fall lower on the religious scale now (say 2-3 out of 5, compared to 3-4 in the past) for many random reason that will take forever to explain, so I'll just skip. As for being conservative, I think I didn't change, the world did. No, honestly, the world did change, I mean with all the media that propagates profanity, alcohol use, sex, ..etc, people like me are now somewhere in the middle of the scale not on the side.

Regardless, the whole point of this post, is not to overload you with more details about me, but rather to walk you through my new self discovery.  I feel, now that I let go of some misconceptions about myself, it became easier for me, to identify my comfort zone.

Building on this whole religious/conservative thingie, I'm sort of/barely/kinda interested in this guy, but he is, actually, quite explicit with his flirting/joking. I thought I'd be really cool and comfortable. In my head, I was like, I dealt with way worse and came out the other side, right? But boy was I wrong. Apparently, there is a limit to everything. There was a point after which, I completely freaked out and panicked. I think I was so abrupt in the conversation, ended the conversation and sat awake in bed (way past my bedtime) thinking how the hell did this happen. I think the following day, I pulled myself together and pretended nothing happened. I am trying to reshape the conversation but I'm not sure how that will work out. I'll keep you posted how it goes.

The whole point of the long story is, I encourage everyone to stop every once in a while and re-validate the preconceptions they have of themselves. You will be shocked to figure out that some things that you took for granted are no longer valid. The questions then become, how are we going to deal with the new "us" and how does that change who we look to meet and how we act when we are around them. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.

So, I end this post with a special thanks to Mr.K for helping me discover a little more about how far my comfort zone goes.