There is popular advice online that if you want to meet the love of your life, it helps to make the right list of physical and mental characteristics you are looking for.
The advice is well-meaning and, of course, on the surface it makes sense. It helps us zero in on who might be right for us in a sea of options, and it helps us quickly recognize when we see it on a dating app.
But this advice can harm us and delay the process of finding someone who will actually make us happy.
At least, that’s the thesis of a recent article in The Atlantic titled, “Most People Don’t Have a Type.”
After pointing to research and talking to experts, the journalist concluded that many daters have a list of characteristics they are looking for in a partner, but can be completely happy with only a few of them.
As a coach who has worked with tens of thousands of people over the past two decades, I’ve seen it myself. The traits that people thought would bring happiness in their relationships didn’t really matter at all.
Now, you might be thinking, “But if I don’t fall into a list of types or attributes, I risk swiping right on everyone in the app. If I think every option might be the one for me.”
Or maybe you’re someone who likes structure and planning, and the thought of winging it when it comes to your dating life gives you anxiety.
In this video, I’ll show you how to be selective without letting a strict type quietly sabotage your love life.
If you’re still with me, subscribe and like this video, and let’s get started.
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Here’s a summary of the transcript from YouTube, slightly edited with AI.
physical attraction
A line from this article is:
“When people peruse dating profiles, they’re often looking for someone with specific interests, qualities, or hobbies.”
The article continues:
“But according to a growing body of relationship research, many people end up marrying someone with some baggage they didn’t think they wanted.”
I think it’s a sign of healthy growth if our list of essentials shrinks as we age. We begin to better understand what is important and what is not.
I wrote about this person I met in my book, love is lifeAnd I will read it to you because it is very relevant.
I once spoke to a happily married man who told me that while he was always chasing after dancers, his wife was one of the least coordinated people he knew.
He laughed when I asked if that bothered him.
“What percentage of my life am I on a dance floor? My wife is the best person I’ve ever met. She’s an amazing mom and we love each other’s company. These things affect my life every day.”
How often are we opting for things on a dating app that won’t actually affect our daily lives?
The article continues:
Physical attraction is also important—much more so than most people realize.
According to researchers the author spoke to, if two people in a relationship are lucky, infatuation will develop: an obsession-like mental state in which you find yourself constantly thinking about that person, noticing them, and wanting to be physically close to them.
Once that initial spark is ignited, motivated reasoning—essentially seeing what you want to see—takes over.
hot pursuit
It’s interesting because it seems almost at odds with going to apps looking for someone with our specific hobbies or interests.
What this means is that we go out there looking for “hot,” and when we find hot—when we find someone we have a huge crush on or an obsession with—we regressively convince ourselves that everything about them is great.
This seems to me to be one of the more pessimistic, almost fatalistic points of the article.
Because while it’s saying that we don’t necessarily have a type, it’s also saying that everyone’s type is hot.
And if we find it hot, we’ll just type it to anyone.
I don’t like this explanation because, for one, it makes us feel powerless when it comes to attracting other people—especially if we don’t identify as animalistically hot.
But it also validates our willingness to dig our heels in with those we’re attracted to.
You know, people say, “Matthew, I’m attracted to what I’m attracted to. I like guys with tattoos and piercings. I’m not going to suddenly be attracted to some clean-cut preppy jock.”
filtering
Now, the person may ask, what do you call someone who has a very large body type?
Dating apps are ultimately designed for you to judge someone by body first. They don’t allow you to swipe for personality.
One might say, “Matthew, I like to have a plan when dating. If I open the pool too wide, I’ll be wasting my time on hundreds of pointless dates.”
I’m not saying we should all date.
But we have to be wary of over-filtering for trivialities.
Whether it’s judging someone from height, accurate personality adjectives, special hobbies, micro-impressions from a message, or a slightly awkward first date or phone call.
The solution is to narrow the pool:
1. Effort
Do they ask thoughtful questions? Answer consistently? Offer a realistic plan?
2. Signs of emotional maturity
Do they speak respectfully about past partners? Can they express anything beyond surface level banter? Do they handle disagreements well?
3. Baseline attraction
Not: “Is this person my natural type?”
Not: “Is this person my imagination?”
Not: “Do I think they’re too hot?”
Just: “Can I see myself kissing this person?”
If the answer is no, do not proceed.
If the answer is yes, explore.
Instead of mercilessly filtering on the front end, a better way to think about it might be:
Be selective about someone’s behavior, but be curious about their personality.
You might be watching this knowing you’ve ended up with the wrong person before.
They were totally your type though.
They had all the features you were looking for, but in the end they didn’t make you happy – or worse, they made you downright miserable.
You don’t have a type
At this point some of you are still shouting through the screen:
“But I don’t want to be attracted to another type of person. I want my type.”
To which I say: Are you trying to satisfy your ego or are you trying to find love?
Because the strategy is different.
One thing I encourage people to look at when trying to break free from this over-confident notion of their type:
You have no type.
You have a story.
A story of how your life was supposed to go and who you were supposed to end up with.
And it’s really hard to extricate ourselves from a story about where our lives were supposed to go.
But adaptability is where the happiness lies.
We may have thought we were going to meet someone who looks a certain way or lives on the other side of the world.
And then we meet someone who lives three streets away and is totally right for us.
The question is whether we can be flexible enough in our approach to life to love that person—or even know them.
pride
To develop these feelings, we often need to spend time with someone in person.
Animation creates attraction. The way one moves, gestures and expresses emotions is important.
We need repeated exposure because you often have to see someone in multiple contexts to understand what’s interesting about them.
And we also—and this is the big one—have to overcome ourselves.
Because perhaps the number one thing that stands in our way of finding love, because we are slaves to our kind, is the ego.
Ego gets in the way.
Pride settles us in all the wrong ways and prevents us from settling in all the right ways.
When we don’t immediately feel the spark with someone — or there’s something about them that we don’t think fits our type — we swing the other way and become judgmental.
Here’s a good litmus test:
If you’re on a date and you find something you don’t like about a person, ask yourself:
Am I immediately shutting them down for something that shouldn’t be a deal breaker?
Am I just making it a deal breaker because I’m frustrated that I’m not feeling exactly what I want to feel at this point?
A huge amount of our ego comes from social pressure.
We want to fit in with the kind of people our friends see us as.
We are not attracted to people in a vacuum.
And social media has made it worse.
There is now a much larger pool of people who can judge our choices—or at least make us feel judged.
Ask yourself:
If no one is watching or judging, should I invest in maintaining this type as I am now?
A lot of who we choose is not about who is right for us.
It is about our insecurities.
And our sense of type expands as our insecurities diminish.
I know this video won’t magically make you go out into the world and suddenly be attracted to different people.
That’s not how this works.
My hope is that this helps you loosen your fists a bit when it comes to what you’re looking for.
This creates more room for curiosity.
It encourages you to pursue interesting feelings with someone you wouldn’t normally expect to be attracted to.
Even if you don’t fully understand it.
And to give myself a little more chance to spend time with such people.
Have you ever been attracted to someone who wasn’t your type? Leave me a comment and tell me about it – or tell me your favorite part of this video
I will read the comments and respond. I look forward to reading them.
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This post was Previously published on YouTube.
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