Estimated reading time: 14 minutes

What’s up Doc? I never thought it would happen to me…

OK now that the  jokes are out of the way, let me tell you about the mess I’ve found myself in. I’m on the apps but I’m not actively searching for anyone at the moment. I won’t turn it down if a guy leaps into my path and grabs me by the shoulders but I’m not trying to find anyone.

Well, a guy messaged me and he was funny and I liked his profiles but his photos showed a guy who just isn’t my type. I tend to like twinks and he’s… not. But I had a free Sunday so I agreed to meet up for coffee and a boardgame at a local hangout. The pictures were accurate, in that he wasn’t uglier than expected but he’s still simply not one like any of the guys I’ve ever dated before. I’m not one for purely physical relationships or casual hook ups (I know, weird, right?) but I do need SOME attraction for it to work for me. And it’s almost always been an all or nothing thing for me; I’m either attracted or not, it doesn’t change. Otherwise I probably would’ve fucked a whole lot more people than I have.

Here’s where things got weird though: we had a great time and I felt incredibly confused when we were leaving because we went for a hug and I had the impulse to kiss him. He was as funny in person and we spent more time talking than we did actually playing the game he brought. It was only supposed to be for an hour but we ended up there for close to four. Before we left, we both mentioned that we never played the game and we should actually try to meet again to play it next time.

That was the moment I realized that I realized I was thinking about a “next time”. Again, this is not my normal type and it’s not a body type I’ve ever been into but I don’t know how to reconcile my impulse to kiss him. Is this just me being a social robot following my programing to go with social niceties without meaning to? Should I ignore my misgivings and give him a chance? Or is this just a friend and I’m too used to my other dates being a lot more intense and physical so I felt like I was supposed to kiss him even if I wasn’t into it?

I’m lost. Help?

Robot Glitching Out

I think you’re making this more complicated than it actually is, RGO. I think what happened is pretty self-explanatory: you gave a dude who’s outside your usual preferences a chance and you liked him. That’s not exactly like Captain Kirk asking an AI to divide by zero, that’s just what we in the dating advice biz call “having a good time.”

Look, this is a lot simpler than you’re making this. You have a type. You haven’t really dated outside of your type before. As it turns out, while you may have some preferences, they’re not exclusive; it just means that all other things being equal, twink types may get a bonus to their charisma check with you.

But the fact that it hasn’t happened before doesn’t mean that you can’t be into other types too. You may have not given them the chance to change your mind before – which is fine, you’re not obligated to – but that isn’t the same as “I’m never into anyone but this narrow type.”

There’s a detail that you drop in your letter that I think is kind of important, for all that you sort of gloss over it: you’re not exclusively about the physical. You need some physical connection, but from the sound of it, your relationships tend to prioritize other factors first. And from the sound of things, this guy pings those other factors pretty hard. That’s generally considered to be a good thing.

I’m going to be honest, I wonder if you’re worried about “what it means” to be into someone who’s outside your usual type. Many times, when someone’s “type” hits all the hallmarks of conventional physical attractiveness, I see as much social programming as I do attraction. This comes up more often than you’d think; a lot of people – mostly, but hardly exclusively guys – will prioritize choosing partners based on what their friends (or strangers or society at large) would think. This has led to more than a few folks struggling when there’s someone how isn’t conventionally hot but hits their buttons anyway. It takes a mature person to be willing to ignore (sometimes real, sometimes imagined) social judgment and pursue the person who does it for them anyway.

On the other hand, attraction has always been a binary for you – it’s there or it’s not – so maybe what you’ve discovered is that this person may just be the exception to your usual type. This is also a thing that happens; sometimes we run into someone who, for whatever reason, just does it for us. They may be entirely unlike our entire dating history, and yet they still hit you like a freight train of lust hauling a payload of champagne and strawberries.

While I understand the confusion, I think the impulse you felt is closer to the truth: this guy hits just right when you didn’t expect it. You had a great time with him and there’s some chemistry there, so maybe you should kiss him about it.

My advice: you had a great first date. Take him up on a second and see what happens. It certainly isn’t going to hurt if you give him a shot, just to be sure. Maybe you’ll discover a new gaming buddy and a boardgame hobby. Or maybe you’ll find out that this dude is the combo breaker of your dating history and you’ll learn some things about yourself in the process.

Good luck.

Recently I took the same advice everyone gets about going to meetups or trying to meet people in person, and every time, I never see anyone attractive. Maybe it’s because being a nerd means that the people who show up are going to be a certain type, I don’t know, but that’s how it goes. When I complained to a friend of mine about the problem, she asked how well I got along with everyone at the meetup and I told her that I got along great with everyone there, but none of them were attractive, so why did that matter? She told me that maybe I was focusing on the wrong things and that I should give people a chance. When I told her, again, that nobody was attractive, she suggested that maybe what I needed to do was expand my horizons or question my preferences.

The only reason this didn’t lead to a fight is because I choked down my reply. I’ve got to be honest, it felt like an insult that she suggested this to me and maybe she was feeling like I was insulting her first because she looks more like some of the women at the meetup. But I still can’t shake that this was her telling me I needed to lower my standards and that I needed to find someone who was more of a looksmatch for me. For the record I’m average height and weight for a man, maybe a little overweight but not much. I dress well, I look good, I’m groomed. I may not be Brad Pitt but think I’m doing ok.

How am I supposed to take “explore your preferences” as anything other than “take what you can get, ugly”? OK, I’ll date someone I think isn’t hot, now we’re both miserable. How is that supposed to help anyone?

Some Guys Get All The Breaks

I’m going to be real with you SGATB: this is the sort of letter I’ve gotten tired of answering. There’s only so many pre-emptively defensive and angry screeds one can read (and print) before you hit seriously diminishing returns; past a certain point, it’s easy to predict the response and the resistance to any advice that isn’t “you’re right, you deserve a 10/10 hottie.” At that point, the primary value of running a letter like that is to toss some engagement meat to the comments section or social media follows.

But this is something that comes up often enough that I feel like its worth talking about anyway – if only so other people who see a bit of themselves in this might see it. This sort of response is close cousin to the folks who get upset when someone they see as being unattractive expresses interest in them, whether in person or (more often) while swiping on the apps.

The embedded complaint in this response is that the person who’s offended feels an implication that this person thinks the offended party is “in their league”; because the interested person is “unattractive” (read: beneath them), then their expression of interest is taken almost as an insult. “How dare that uggo think they had a chance with me? What does that say about me that they thought they had a chance?”

Well… what it says is that they thought you were cute. Oh no. Horror of horrors. It’s not a referendum on you or the “quality” of the person that you “can get”, it’s just someone who thought you were hot and decided they were going to take a chance. Shooters shoot, no different than a guy who thinks they’d have a chance with Sydney Sweeney if the opportunity presented itself.

The same thing applies here: you’re taking your friend’s suggestion as an insult based on the idea that what she was saying is “you’re shooting for the moon and maybe you should aim lower” when it’s pretty clear that what she was saying is that your priorities are costing you dates and maybe you should examine them.

Your response is pure ego protection; you’re coming to this from a position that the quality of your partner’s desirability to others is an indicator of your OWN value. But that’s not what’s being asked of you. What’s being asked isn’t about standards or your supposed value, it’s about compatibility. Your friend is asking you to consider whether you’re missing out on some amazing people – people you might find attractive if you got to know them – because you are locking yourself into a narrow definition of “attractive”

Just as importantly, it sounds like you’re friend is brushing up on something I ask people: why are you asking for grace that you yourself aren’t willing to give others? Why is it ok for someone who thinks he’s average-to-ok to ask for a chance when he sees the same question as being insulting when it’s asked of him?

Here’s the thing that I think you’re missing: you are, presumably looking for a relationship, not just trying to get an itch scratched. While attraction is (presumably; based on your letter, I think we can take it as written that you’re allosexual) a part of that, so are shared interest, compatible values and lifestyles and relationship types, what you expect from that relationship. It’s recognizing that a partner, especially a long-term or life-long partner, should be able to meet the same criteria as the one you have for friends at the very least. After all, someone who you want to share your life with needs to FIT into your life and you in theirs. That is much harder to do with someone who’s interests, beliefs and values don’t mesh with yours.

Now this much tends to be fairly straightforward. But consider for a second: there are reasons why nerds of a feather flock together, just as jocks tend to cluster, goths tend to group up in murders and so on. They’re self-sorting into communities based around shared values and shared interests. It’s much easier to build connections with people when you share a common language as it were; having those commonalities and shared values serve as on-ramps to learning more and finding the sorts of qualities that make people compatible as more than just acquaintances.

Now here’s the part that causes a lot of people to stop listening – but I’m going to say it anyway: one of those values is often how much they conform to convention, and how strongly they differ and how those differences express themselves. The more that people diverge from convention in some ways – such as having a lot of nerdy or geeky interests – the more likely they are to diverge in other ways… including conventional standards of fashion, style and attractiveness.

The more a subculture – whether it’s weebs/otaku, goths, gamers, theater kids, you name it – flout convention, the more likely they are to ignore or flout what they see as restrictive or pointless expectations of style or beauty. When you already feel like you’re out of the mainstream or see the mainstream as being something you’re uninterested in, the less likely you are to conform to what the mainstream expects. You’re more likely to express yourself in ways that feel more authentic to yourself instead of a seemingly arbitrary standard. This can mean styles of clothing that don’t follow the “rules” or “standards” – baggier or less form-fitting outfits, clothes that signal tribal or cultural affiliation or membership, etc – and non-typical haircuts, makeup styles (if any), hair color, etc. It can mean not rigorously trying to fit a narrow definition of “attractive” body types, behavior or even relationship models. This isn’t the same as being unattractive; it simply means that they aren’t following convention.

The conflict that comes up – one that you’re experiencing – is that many people tend to not see how they’re trying to have it both ways. They themselves are unconventional, they position themselves as being outside the mainstream and want credit for their uniqueness, but then expect convention in other aspects of their lives – including from their partners. They want the clout that comes from having a conventionally attractive partner, to be able to say “I’m the sort of person who can get a conventionally hot girlfriend”, because it serves as a reflection of their value in the eyes of the same mainstream society they stand apart from.

I’m hammering this point because it ties directly to the level of insult you seem to be taking from your friend. You’re part of this community and looking for a partner who presumably could fit into those communities, but at the same time you see visible signs of being part of those communities as a bad thing – something that reflects badly on you if you were to date them. You are treating “have you considered giving someone a chance because you get along with them and seeing if something grows between you” as an objective declaration of your worth and attractiveness, rather than a question of whether some of these people might not be a better partner for you than someone who isn’t likely to go to these sorts of events.

That response and offense you express brings up a number of questions about how you feel about yourself and your community, especially the women who participate in them. Not to put too fine a point on it, but it raises questions about what you value in women in general and women’s participation in the communities you align with. It also raises a question of what you prioritize in a partner: someone who’s in alignment with your non-standard interests, passions and values, or more in line with convention that you supposedly are out of step with.

Nobody is telling you to force yourself to date someone you’re not attracted to. In fact, I’m rather firmly against doing that. But what’s being asked is whether you have ever considered that maybe you’re cutting yourself short by how you’ve set your priorities and how firmly you seem to be looking for conventional appearances and styles. The fact that you got along with people at the meetups suggests that you liked them as people; you might find that this also translates to finding their uniqueness more appealing and attractive as you get to know them and stop seeing them through a lens of “must be this impressive to strangers to ride”.

After all, physical attraction and compatibility are two different things; there’s overlap, but attraction is more than just physical. Attraction, like compatibility, is holistic; it’s about the totality of a person, not any one thing or even a group of things. Someone can be hotter than a four-alarm fire and yet be the worst possible choice for you as a partner. Meanwhile someone who may not follow conventional standards of what’s considered “feminine” or “beautiful” could be the nitric acid to your glycerol; put the two together and you’re going to have chemistry so powerful it’s explosive.

Someone saying “You don’t seem happy with your search, so maybe you should consider broadening your options” isn’t an insult. Your friend isn’t telling you that you’re ugly or calling you a loser when she suggests that maybe you should examine your preferences; she’s suggesting that you might be making things harder on yourself while missing amazing potential partners who you may be happy with. Examining your preferences and what you find attractive and why isn’t conceding that you can’t get a baddie, it’s saying “have you considered that there’re a lot more fine women out there if you don’t rule them out immediately?”

Taking that as an insult, however, is insulting your friend, especially with the implication that she’s telling you that you need to accept less instead of being concerned about your happiness.

Now again: I’m not going to tell you that you’re obligated to give anyone a chance to win you over or to try to force yourself to date anyone you don’t want to. You can set your standards exactly where you want and make them as stringent or loose as you choose. But those standards and priorities come with trade-offs, and some of those can end up making finding someone who’s right for you that much harder. Depending on what you choose to prioritize, you may make compatibility more of a challenge. You’re welcome to decide that you want to hold out for someone who looks like Olivia Rodrigo in a Wolverine hoodie and toting an N64 under her arm, but you’re going to be looking for a long time. You are going to have to accept this as part of the price you’re willing to pay.

Good luck.