are types toxic?

digressions on the finance guy song, expectations, my own dating failures, and more.

I have always been a girl with a type. Every guy I have gone after post-puberty has been the tall, pretty, and sporty type who studies something with a six-figure starting salary. Another thing that they all had in common was that they were a little bit crazy. My first boyfriend I dated for two weeks my freshman year of high school, he broke up with me over text, then immediately regretted it and proceeded to write poetry about me for two years. A guy I was seeing in high school, is now seeing a girl the same age as we were when we met. Needless to say, I have always chased the adrenaline rush, rather than warm, fuzzy feelings. That was until I met my boyfriend and ever since I realized that I was toxic in my own ways for chasing a commodification of romance rather than a relationship.

Recently, if you have been on TikTok you have heard the “I’m looking for a man in finance, trust fund, six-five, blue eyes,” or its subsequent discourse. Though the song is obviously in jest, it’s become a trend to insert your own type into the beat. Love Island contestants sang acapella “I’m looking for a girl in the villa…” with a few attributes of their type. While some contestants sang broadly about their Mrs. Right, others sang about individual specific traits they are looking for such as hair color, eye color, and height. Even further, there are of course the infamous street interviews asking the age-old question — blondes or brunettes? It all just makes me wonder if grading attraction on a pre-made rubric is actually helping anyone find love.

In “Yes, You Really Do Have a ‘Type,’ Science Says” the author, Alexandra Sifferlin, argues that attraction is an elusive science about exposure, and life experiences. If you were to sit down with someone random and choose between two people based on attraction, you’d agree about one half of the time. However, I don’t think the evidence presented in the article says that there is a certain combination of features that would be the ideal partner for someone. It more or less argues that attraction exists and its unique to the person. When you see a person, you can sort them into one of two baskets — attractive or not attractive. There is nothing wrong with that, and I’d argue that this perception is less harmful than creating an outline of attractive features you are looking for.

Just scrolling through any social media platform, when you find a video of a couple look through the comments. Occasionally, if one partner is more conventionally attractive than the other, the reactions to the video will say stuff like “they must have a great personality,” “did they save an orphan from a burning building,” or even “what did this person do in their past life to deserve this?” Within the concept of dating, there seems to be this imagined hierarchical structure that ignores individual attraction. All personality traits are suspended within the pyramid, with it only valuing conventional good-looks, class prestige, flashy jobs, and sexual ability. We’ve heard about it since we were kids. “Oh, I could never go for her. That girl is so out of my league!” Part of the reason people want to glow up so badly, is to achieve status of the league they’re attracted to. It has become almost a game. Leveraging these superficial aspects while dating has permeated how we value ourselves, and in tandem how we value our relationships.

A recent wave of self-help advice I have seen on social media platforms is to become your dream partner. For example, if you want to date someone fluent in several languages, then become fluent in multiple languages. It begs the question that if we are dating with superficial priorities in mind, do we just seek these attributes for ourselves. Group Attractiveness is a phenomenon where people rate the overall attractiveness of the group higher than the average individual in the group. Perhaps, in seeking a partner we hope that their proximity to us will allow us to try on their attributes as our own. However, I do think that this movement raises an important question — how much can we truly expect of others?

Dating is the name, and transaction is the game. By finding someone wealthy, intelligent, and good-looking you are able to co-opt these attributes for ourselves, but perhaps instead we should look to develop our values within ourselves. Ideally, you should be able to exist independent from others and be content with who yourself. Instead, we outline everything we wish we were and expect it of others. Friendships work very similarly in some ways. One video from TikTok user Eeieeiyooo criticizes the shallow way some people make friend especially in influencer circles.

Is it actual community that you’re building or a group of well-curated people who look really good in a room and photo together

The question stands — do you actually like your “type” or do you like how others perceive you when you're with them? The issue with types, is that once you meet someone you truly love and care about, you no longer measure them up to your type. When you date with your type in mind, you are not dating for love. Sure, people can have expectations for their partner, but if you have to convince yourself to date someone because they are handsome, rich, etc and not because they make you giddy, I promise you, it’s better to just stay single.

Once upon a time, I was dating this guy who was exactly my type on paper. But there was one fatal flaw with him, he did not like me — at least he did not treat me like he did. He would ghost on dates, be late to everything, and did not understand the difference between morning/Goodmorning. Almost two years later, I realize it was because I was dating with my brain and not my heart. Though he fit my imagined criteria, we had very different expectations for what a relationship looked like. Granted, it was a short-lived relationship, but it was a huge lesson for me in terms of expectations. Someone can be your type on the surface but can be so wrong for you.

Last weekend, my boyfriend came up to visit me while I was feeling under the weather. Upon his arrival, I, in a gushy mood, threw my arms around him and said that he was the perfect boyfriend. He chuckled, looked me in the eyes, weighing his next words carefully. When he spoke, he responded plainly by saying “no I’m not.” I asked him why he would say that, and he told me that he doesn’t check everything off in my checklist. I had totally forgotten that I had ever shown him my twenty-three point “husband checklist” I had made after a particularly horrendous bout of a freshman year situationship. Originally, I had made it to remind myself of what I wanted out of a relationship, but I quickly realized that it was not fair to grade my loving boyfriend on an objective checklist. Immediately after, I deleted the note and with it any expectation of its total fulfillment. I had already found someone who checked all the boxes that mattered.