dating as a type a lovergirl
on the struggles of finding love
i came out of the womb as type a girly
from kindergarten all the way through senior year of high school — i played classical piano, won inter-school speaking competitions, acted in theatre, read literature books, and excelled in math. i knew what winning felt like from a very young age, and i loved that feeling.
adults told me that i would have a hard time dating. boys don’t like girls who are too smart.
at sixteen, i didn’t believe them. because boys would slip notes into my bag, take upper division math to impress me, and hand-carry cupcakes from california to jakarta just for me. my love life was going to be fine!
then when i moved to new york at twenty-three, finally ready to be in a serious relationship, i was introduced to the concept of the roster.
where you are expected to go on as many first and second dates as you can. with different people at the same time. and none of what you do together means anything until you both decide it means something.
i never bought into the argument of the roster. the thought of having a roster made me want to gag. perhaps it was the voice of the idealistic, type a lover girl in me. i would only try to get to know one person at a time.
but when i did, i ended up in tears infront of grace and marco because i felt like i would be utterly alone forever. so i swore off dating. i was an ambitious and competent woman. how could i let a mediocre man make me feel pathetic!
in a typical type a fashion, i made a list of things i wanted in a man, then ranked my preferences in order. it was my way of trying to establish order in this storm called love that made me feel so powerless.
some friends told me maybe i shouldn’t have the list, or maybe i should lower my standards for the short term. but both didn’t sit right with me. i wasn’t going to date a man just because i felt lonely. ew!
recently i saw an article about modern day women in nyc struggling to date, which got subtweeted about how women don’t know the difference between selecting and filtering.
it is easy to judge ambitious women who are single as being difficult and demanding. to say the problem with career-oriented individuals is we don’t know how to compromise or put someone else first.
one thing i have always been sure about is the fact that i am a really good friend. i am thoughtful, generous, and will always go above and beyond for the people i love.
i know how to be soft, and i know how to put someone else’s happiness above my own. but just because i am a lover girl, doesn’t mean that i have no standards.
because if love were a fluid, the list would be its container, something to keep it from spilling over and being misused. loving someone unconditionally without expectations or boundaries will create space for abuse. the list isn’t about control; it’s about protecting yourself.
what i got wrong about the list was thinking it should be about the quantifiable things like someone's job title or height. the things people tell you matter, but don’t really. the list should be about how you're treated. how you compromise. how you argue—with and for each other. whether or not you feel seen.
relationships always made me feel uncomfortable because the part of myself that wanted to be soft and tender-hearted clashed with the side that was always strong-willed and unafraid. at one point, i wanted to expunge that part of myself. the softness. because of how much being hurt made me feel like i wasn’t strong.
but i realized that loving deeply is a special gift that should be protected and cherished. not everyone has that same capacity to feel, especially not to give. loving is a gift.
when i was watching the sunset in melbourne, i had an epiphany of sorts. finding love is supposed to be hard. because genuine connection worth fighting for is hard to find. if it was easy then a genuine connection would be a connection and the frequency would discount its value.
the feeling should come easily, but finding and fighting for it is supposed to be hard.
When dating, I made a similar list, just like you! I don’t necessarily consider this Type A behavior; isn’t it natural to prioritize? The tweet you featured has a condescending tone, but it has some element of truth: I truly didn’t know the difference between selection criteria and filtering criteria before I started dating. Learning the difference was key to my eventual success on the apps — with minimal rostering :) And the list was what helped me with that.