Dating & colds

I’m amidst fighting off a wicked cold, which has me feeling miserable and believe me when I say it’s a bit hard to write when you’re congested, coughing, sneezing, with your thoughts feeling clouded from the cold and probably a little because of all the medicine running through your system. So with my eyes feeling so dry they feel like they’re about to bleed, I decided to take this time to write a blog, even though I just want to climb into bed and underneath my warm comforter, because this is an issue that keeps coming up and bugging me. So I pray you understand where I’m coming from and I don’t wake up in the morning with hate mail, or lost followers. 

But being as I decided to step back out into the dating scene after taking a year hiatus from the dating world, to get my head right and figure out what it is exactly I want in a relationship. Naturally a few female friends have taken it upon themselves to try and fix me up with anyone who shows me the slightest bit of interest and when I say “No thanks,” and when they ask why, I’m forced to tell these friends that I don’t or didn’t find the other person physically attractive, which often gets me a dirty looks, or I get called mean, pig-headed or shallow as I'm told how looks don’t matter, but you thing of it is, I disagree.

Now, if someone were to judge another's personality, or refuse to be friends with someone, just because of their physical appearance, then yes, I would call that shallow, or petty and even discriminatory. But I don't believe the same applies to romantic and physical relationships.

What defines physical attraction is different for each of us, everyone is different and everyone had different attributes they find attractive in the opposite sex. Some like redheads over blonds, short over tall people and just because one person doesn’t find a particular feature attractive doesn’t mean another person wouldn’t. For example I’m attracted to short girls, which doesn’t mean I can never be attracted to a tall girl, or won’t consider dating a girl taller than me. But it'll take a little more for me to date someone taller than me, despite how gorgeous she might be, which is where personality will become the determining factor and I will never date a girl just because I found her physically attractive but not her personality.   

Furthermore, I feel that for intimate relationships to work, there needs to be physical chemistry and that spark at the beginning of the relationship. Of course in the long term, personality is what matters most. But I think it's ignorant to discount the importance of mutual physical attraction and say that "looks don't matter”. But I still get dirty looks when someone asks my opinion on someone else and I tell them how I thought they were great but I wasn't physically attracted to them. I can't control or help what I'm attracted to, no more than I can control what foods I like to eat.

Saying that "looks matter" gets you evil glances. People calling you shallow, a pig, judgmental or picky, It's not saying that a certain type of look is all that matters. It's not the same as saying "everyone has to look like a super model". Just that two people's definitions of attraction need to mesh.

When it comes to dating, I for one am not attracted to overweight girls, I’m sorry. But I’m not saying that overweight people unattractive and I know many of you may find that objectionable, which is okay. I’m not flawless, but I am being honest. This is something I believe a lot of us think, but never say.

I'm not trying to make broad, sweeping generalizations about appearances here. I'm just writing as accurately as I can, and as true to myself as I can. Maybe I’m not pulling it off as well as I can or should, maybe I didn't explain it in this blog as well as I could have. But after tirelessly debating with friends, strangers and a few matches I got paired with, where I tried being nice, by telling them I live a very physically active life-style and I want someone to share that part of me and sometimes I responded to their messages by apologizing profusely that I simply wasn’t attracted to them, just because I don’t know the etiquette of online dating and getting messages from a match and personally I find it rude to simply ignore their message. Because I know what it’s like to sitting there wondering if they got you message, if they found someone, or if they just didn't like me. For me not knowing often feels worse than knowing and for remarkable most of these girls thanked me for my honesty and some I have spoken with and we talked about our experiences on the site, or on other dating sites, with some of these people becoming e-mail pin pals who check in on each other every now and then. 

But I digress and I guess what I’m trying to say is that no one here can say what’s beautiful except for you. Beauty as they used to say when I was a kid is always in the eye of the beholder, and I believe that. There have been girls I found attractive that no one else saw, who would sometimes mock or ridicule me about my crush, but it never changed what I found attractive in someone else. And even though I’m starting to try and find the one for me again, by trying out e-harmony and other dating sites, I just want to say I’m not looking for a super-model, but I would like someone who had a healthy body type, they can be thin yes, average, athletic or curvy, I want someone I can go running with, take hiking, go on long road trips, someone I can sing awfully too, someone who inspires me, that person I can hold, who’ll hold me in return, that someone to help me live and grow with. Someone I can just trust and know all the love I possess. And I happily accept that some people aren't going to agree with that. But if you don't or don't like the way I handled this topic, hopefully you can now understand a bit why I gave it a shot in the way that I did.

My best-friend Hannah helping me find my heart.