How many times have you heard one half of a couple say, “It’s really weird because you know what? He wasn’t really my type.” Maybe not as often as “Oh, he’s not my type.” But it does get you wondering about this whole “type” business.
I feel confident saying that most of us don’t know diddly squat about who we are going to fall in love with. On paper, a woman may want a tall, muscular, handsome man. What if she met such a man who fit her description? Say they go out on a couple of dates and she thinks he’s great. Then one day, a couple of hooligans approached them on the street. One of the thugs brandishes a wooden bat. The tall muscular man starts getting very nervous. He realizes that all those days in the gym building the perfect set of deltoids and a sculpted torso aren’t going to matter when that bat comes hurtling towards his head. The gang surrounds them and the biggest thug steps up to the tall man. He grabs him by the collar and growls menacingly at him that his gang and him are going to take anything they want, including his woman. The tall man is terrified and starts trembling, fear permeating every well-toned muscle in his body. His voice wavers and he can barely form the words to tell him that he wants no trouble and will give him his car keys and his wallet in exchange for leaving him and his girlfriend unharmed. The big thug guffaws and motions at the crony with a bat. The crony steps up and jabs the bat at the tall man’s head, knocking him to the ground. The tall muscular man has been felled, now on his knees. He is crying now, begging for his life.We’ll leave it at that because the outcome doesn’t really matter. I don’t think that he’s getting laid after what happened. Okay, maybe a pity fuck. This tall man with a great muscular body may initially be appealing to a woman. But guess what? What she really wants is a man who will make her feel safe and secure, free from danger. It doesn’t matter that he’s tall and has good looks and hard muscles if he’s going to act like a punk bitch at the first sign of danger. She wants a man who can protect her and provide for her. It is the state of being that a man can put her in that will generate the attraction necessary for a relationship. Emotions are what guide us in the realm of love, and most of us can’t even begin to be in tune with ourselves to know what we really want. Yes, we will have general preferences, such as women for relatively taller men and men for relatively shorter women. We probably know that we like looking into light brown eyes or that we like well dressed men who look good in a suit. What’s silly is restricting ourselves to those particular archetypes of our ideal man or woman.We are all inclined to be superficial. We likely approach others based on their looks. Physical attraction plays but a small part in spending the rest of your life with a soulmate. I felt fortunate to have met this one woman…she was a bit taller than I was. She was rather skinny, and not particularly eye catching. On paper, I prefer women who are curvier and more voluptuous, and more importantly, smaller than me. Despite these discrepancies in preference, I fell in love with her, and deeply. Had I held fast to my preferences, I would never have had the pleasure of getting to know her. I would have never found out what a wonderful woman she was, how bright her soul shined.
It’s a shame that we generalize so much. We lump potential romantic partners into groups, making judgments that we may feel are justified and accurate. But the truth of the matter is that we are all unique, with individual nuances and nagging imperfections. We should give more people a chance, because you just never know. The truth is, we rarely ever know just who it is that we’re going to fall deeply and madly in love with. We just like to think we know. We like to fantasize. We lose sight that the power of love is boundless, breaking barriers and defying logic. The heart knows what the heart wants. Who are we to meddle in such matters?
