I’ve Met a Guy—And He’s Short

I hate that this title is even a title.

I hate that as a society, in dating, height is considered a preference, something men are forced to include in their bios, along with if you care about that sort of thing because it’s clear that so many people do.

Just like women have felt the pressure to look a certain way, be a certain size, have curves—but only in the right places—full lips, but no filler, flawless skin and never wear too much makeup, so too, do men have expectations for how they should look. And arguably the most important one? Height.

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So, I’ve met this guy. We were set up through a friend of a friend. I’d been putting off meeting up with him for weeks — not intentionally, but we kept just chatting via text without setting a date, and I was busy and not feeling in the mood to go on yet another date that, from experience, was probably not going to work out anyway. My dating motivation had waned over the last few months.

Finally, we made a plan. Just see what happens, my friend said. You never know.

My friend had also warned me beforehand: he’s short. As if he had a criminal record and now was my opportunity to get out of it if I wanted. We stood side by side and measured our own heights to see if he was taller than me. She’d met him through her friend only a handful of times.

“I think you’re exactly the same height,” she said. “Does that bother you?”

“No,” I said immediately, but there was a hint of hesitation in my own response, which surprised me. I thought I was above this sort of thing? But when I looked at my track record for dating, most of my previous partners had been much taller than me, except for the odd date here and there, and one guy who I fell in love with in college.

She said, “Because it is a deal breaker for some women, so it would be okay if it was, you know.”

I thought about that for some time. Would it be okay if it was? Is saying you have a height preference the same as saying you want someone who works out? Or someone who reads books?

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A few weeks ago, before the date in question even arose, I was listening to a podcast on Today Explained called, “I wish I was a little bit taller,” which was about short men who well, “wish they were taller.” The opening begins with a 6’3” producer on the show admitting: “Life is much easier being tall.”

The episode goes on to explore how short men in America are undergoing surgery to give themselves more height. The procedure involves actually breaking your legs to then “give you a few more inches of height.” You can read more about that here. It really hit me how big of an insecurity this is for a lot of men and the extreme lengths we’re all willing to go to change something about ourselves.

The guest on the show was short and had married a woman taller than him. He talked about how, when they first met, he told her that if he was taller she “would’ve gone out with him by now”—something he later apologized for. She did like him at the time. She liked that he was funny. And kind. And often the largest presence in a room because of his charismatic personality.

But I get it—a lot of women do care about height. In the same way a man could tell me that my weight doesn’t matter, I have lived 29 years with proof that it does.

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When I got to the bar, my date—whom we’ll call M—was already there. He got up to greet me, a kiss on the cheek, a hug, and I assessed the height situation: we were the same. M was handsome. Like, really handsome. His face was kind and he had dark hair, a slightly scruffy beard. He ordered us two drinks and then…we just hit it off. We spent the whole night talking and carried on to a restaurant and we didn’t kiss that first night, but a week later we were out again. We went to dinner and a comedy show, and the whole time I could feel this electricity between us. At the end of the night, we kissed. And by the next day, we were already making plans to see each other again.

I recently wrote about how I was getting tired of the cycle of the dating app game. It felt like almost too-perfect timing to meet someone off-app who I actually liked.

Do I care about height? Maybe unconsciously I did. But when I really think about it, what matters more to me is our connection. Is he kind? Is he considerate and respectful? Do we get along as people? And yes, attraction is important, but I was attracted to him, and height had nothing to do with it.

Like with any kind of dating “preference,” I think it’s easy to close ourselves off to an entire group of people because we think they don’t fit our idea of what our partner is supposed to look like. But in doing so, we might miss out on the greatest love of our lives.

Okay, I know it’s only been two dates, but I’m excited at the possibility of love again. Short, tall, in-between, people have a way of surprising us.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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