John Mayer is a bit obsessed with finding his wife, but thankfully it sounds like she's not going to be Paris Hilton. The singer (Mayer, thankyouverymuch) denied Hilton's aggressive advances [1] at a Grammy post party [2] on Sunday night. Back to the wife though, Mr. Fitness, seen here running in Santa Monica yesterday, recently talked candidly to Best Life magazine [3] about that search and how the day he met Jessica Simpson was the day he grew up. Here's highlights: [4]

[4]

• On finding the one: “I think about my wife all the time. I kind of obsess on it, and what I want to find is a person who can speak those kinds of magic words. I mean ‘No complaints’ is a great way to live. Also, I want a woman who doesn’t hear ‘How are you?’ as ‘I would like you to come up with something dramatic now that will allow me to sit in front of you and give you more attention than I would have if you had just said No complaints.’ When I find the person I can relate to on that level and who is also a pinup and who also says ‘Can I please take pictures of your ass?’ then I am going to get married to her. That I can promise you.”
• On his fears: “My fear is that I go up to the girl of my dreams and say, ‘I’m sorry, but I’ve got to say hello to you,’ and she slides the stool back and gets up and walks away, saying, ‘Not for me, Bub. I don’t want anything to do with you.’ And she says that because of something in my past. I mean, I know how to be a celebrity. I know how to be a guy on the street. I know how to roll with the punches. I know how to do the whole thing. And my past is actually pretty sterling. But when I think about my wife, I worry. I worry about what she thinks when she reads about me in US Weekly. It’s all vapor, nothing, ether. But I worry about it. I worry about what she thinks."
• On his personal life "I tell you this without fear. I don’t feel like anybody knows my personal life. My personal life is 100 percent intact. Where I ate last night or who I ate with is not my personal life. You want to say the name Jessica Simpson? Say the name Jessica Simpson. You want to say Cameron Diaz, say Cameron Diaz. That’s not my personal life. My personal life is what happens in my heart and my head. Nobody knows what’s going on in my head.”

To read more from John (and what he has to say about Jessica Simpson) just

• On Jessica: “Let me bring you into the mind-set now. When you take two people who are trying to get together and relate, that’s already kind of a cluster f--k. But then, with us, there was this whole looming threat. And at a certain point, I got so many tension headaches just from magazine covers. Real tension headaches, from the mention of my name with someone else’s name and how people felt about that. Literal physiological responses where I was like, Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. I thought to myself, Are you sure you want to do this? And what I said to myself was, You know what? There are times in your life when there is nobody to confer with but yourself. And you know what? This is my life, and this is a person I want to spend more time with, and I’m not going to let that other vapor get in the way. And I’ll defend that decision till the end.” He pauses, then marches on. “I also want to say about Jessica that I don’t want to talk about her or my experience with her as a dark cloud or something tumorous or cancerous. That’s all perception. It was very comfortable and very soothing. I never went, Gee, I sure would like two or three days away from this."
• On how meeting Jess made him grow up: “I’d been a famous touring musician who had also been a shut-in for a really long time, which was weird,” he says. “But I’d had it really, really good. I had hit song, hit song, hit song. ‘Did you hear about this kid?’ And I’m like, Look at my respect. Look how credible my artistry is. I’m really perfect. I’m really doing it. It’s aces. And you get addicted to cultivating that thing and making it perfect. I’m telling you, man, I’m not f--king with you. But it stopped being perfect the day I said to myself, Wow, my heart is involved in this. The one thing I’d never been in my life is a person without a guitar. I used to be really frightened that if I stopped, it would leave me. But I had to evolve. If I wanted to see Jessica more, I had to grow up. And that’s the day that I grew up. A lot of people say it’s the day I grew down. Too bad. It’s the day I grew up.”

I am a sucker for when he defends Jess [5], but alas, it seems those two were never meant to be. While it sounds like he really wants that someone special, the gossip columns can attest that Mr. Mayer is having no trouble finding ladies in the meantime.

Flynet [6]