There’s popular advice online that if you want to meet the love of your life, it helps to create the exact list of physical and emotional traits you’re looking for.
The advice is well-meaning and, of course, on the surface it makes sense. It helps us zero in on who might be right for us in a sea of options and helps us recognize it faster when we see it on a dating app.
But this advice can also hurt us and delay the process of finding someone who will actually make us happy.
At least, that is the thesis of a recent article published in The Atlantic titled, “Most People Don’t Have a Type.”
The journalist concludes, after pointing to research and speaking to experts, that many daters have a list of traits they’re looking for in a partner, but can be perfectly happy with someone who has few of them.
As a coach who has worked with hundreds of thousands of people over the last two decades, I have seen this myself. The traits that people thought would bring them happiness in a relationship actually didn’t end up mattering at all.
Now, you might be hearing this and thinking, “But if I don’t hone in on a type or a list of qualities, I risk swiping right on everyone on the apps. I can’t narrow down thousands of options if I’m thinking every single option could be the one for me.”
Or maybe you’re someone who likes structure and planning, and the thought of winging it when it comes to your dating life gives you anxiety.
In this video, I will show you how to stay selective without letting a rigid type quietly sabotage your love life.
If you’re still with me, hit subscribe and like on this video, and let’s get started.
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Here is a summary of the transcript from YouTube, slightly edited with AI.
Physical Attraction
One of the lines in this article is:
“When people peruse dating profiles, they’re often looking for someone who has specific interests, qualities, or hobbies.”
The article continues:
“But according to a growing body of relationship research, many people end up marrying someone with few of their must-haves and a lot of haves they didn’t think they desired.”
I think it’s a sign of healthy growth if our list of must-haves goes down as we age. We start discerning better what matters and what doesn’t.
I wrote about this person I met in my book, Love Life, and I’ll read it to you because it’s very relevant.
I once spoke to a happily married man who told me that while he’d always chased after dancers, his wife is one of the least coordinated people he has ever known.
He laughed when I asked if this bothered him.
“What percentage of my life am I on a dance floor? My wife is the best person I’ve ever met. She’s an amazing mother and we adore each other’s company. These things affect my life every single day.”
How often are we selecting for things on a dating app that aren’t actually going to affect our lives every single day?
The article goes on:
Physical attraction matters too—far more than most people realize.
According to the researchers the writer spoke with, if two people in a relationship are lucky, infatuation will set in: an obsession-like mental state where you find yourself thinking about the person constantly, noticing them, and wanting to be physically close to them.
Once that initial spark ignites, motivated reasoning—essentially seeing what you want to see—takes over.
Finding Hot
This is interesting because it almost seems to conflict with the point about us going on apps looking for someone with certain hobbies or interests.
What this seems to suggest is we go on there looking for “hot,” and when we find hot—when we find someone we have a giant crush on or obsession with—we retroactively convince ourselves that everything about them is great.
This seems to me to be one of the more pessimistic, almost fatalistic points in the article.
Because while it’s saying we don’t necessarily have a type, it’s also saying everyone’s type is hot.
And if we find hot, we’ll just make anyone our type.
I don’t like that interpretation because, for one, it makes us feel disempowered when it comes to attracting other people—especially if we don’t identify as being animalistically hot.
But it also validates our desire to dig our heels in when it comes to the people we’re attracted to.
You know, people say, “Matthew, I’m attracted to what I’m attracted to. I like guys with tattoos and piercings. I’m not suddenly going to become attracted to some clean-cut preppy jock.”
Filtering
Now, that person might ask, what would you say to someone who very much has a physical type?
Dating apps are ultimately designed for you to judge someone on physique first. They don’t allow you to swipe for personality.
Someone might also say, “Matthew, I like having a plan when I’m dating. If I open up the pool too widely, I’m going to waste my time on hundreds of meaningless dates.”
I’m not saying we should date everyone.
But we have to be careful of over-filtering for trivia.
Whether it’s height, exact personality adjectives, niche hobbies, micro-impressions from one message, or judging someone from a slightly awkward first date or phone call.
The solution is to narrow the pool by:
1. Effort
Do they ask thoughtful questions? Respond consistently? Suggest a real plan?
2. Emotional maturity signals
Do they speak respectfully about past partners? Can they express something beyond surface-level banter? Do they handle disagreement well?
3. Baseline attraction
Not: “Is this person my normal type?”
Not: “Is this person my fantasy?”
Not: “Do I think they’re insanely hot?”
Just: “Could I see myself kissing this person?”
If the answer is no, don’t proceed.
If the answer is yes, explore.
Instead of ruthlessly filtering at the front end, a better way of thinking about this might be:
Be selective about someone’s behavior, but be curious about their personality.
You may be watching this knowing you’ve ended up with the wrong person before.
Even though they were completely your type.
They had all the traits you look for, but ultimately they couldn’t make you happy—or worse, they made you utterly miserable.
You Don’t Have a Type
Some of you at this point are still shouting through the screen:
“But I don’t want to be attracted to a different kind of person. I want my type.”
To which I say: Are you trying to satisfy your ego or find love?
Because the strategies are different.
One thing I encourage people to look at when trying to break free from this over-concretized idea of their type is this:
You don’t have a type.
You have a story.
A story of how your life was supposed to go and who you were supposed to end up with.
And it’s really hard to unshackle ourselves from a story about where our life was supposed to go.
But adaptability is where happiness lies.
We may have thought we were going to meet someone who looked a certain way or lived on the other side of the world.
And then we meet someone who lives three streets away and is completely right for us.
The question is whether we can be flexible enough in our vision for life to allow ourselves to love that person—or even get to know them.
Ego
To develop those feelings, we often need to spend time with someone in person.
Animation creates attraction. The way someone moves, gestures, and emotes matters.
We need repeated exposure because you often need to see someone in multiple contexts to understand what’s attractive about them.
And we also—and this is the big one—need to get over ourselves.
Because perhaps the number one thing getting in the way of us finding love, because we’re slaves to our type, is ego.
Ego gets in the way.
Ego makes us settle in all the wrong ways and stops us settling in all the right ways.
When we don’t immediately feel fireworks with someone—or there’s something about them we don’t think fits our type—we swing to the other side and become judgmental.
Here’s a good litmus test:
If you’re on a date and you find something you don’t like about a person, ask yourself:
Am I immediately writing them off for something that shouldn’t be a deal breaker?
Am I only turning it into a deal breaker because I’m frustrated that I’m not feeling exactly what I want to be feeling at this stage?
A huge amount of our ego comes from social pressure.
We want to conform to the kinds of people our friends have seen us with.
We don’t get attracted to people in a vacuum.
And social media has made this even worse.
There’s now a much larger pool of people who can judge our choices—or at least make us feel judged.
Ask yourself:
If no one was watching or judging, would I be as invested in maintaining this type as I am right now?
So much of who we pick isn’t about who’s right for us.
It’s about our insecurity.
And our concept of our type expands as our insecurity lessens.
I know this video isn’t going to magically make you go out into the world and suddenly become attracted to different people.
That’s not how this works.
My hope is that it helps you unclench your fist a little bit when it comes to what you think you’re looking for.
That it creates more room for curiosity.
That it encourages you to follow interesting feelings with someone you wouldn’t normally expect to be attracted to.
Even if you don’t fully understand it.
And to give yourself a little more leeway to spend time with those kinds of people.
Have you ever been attracted to someone who was not your type? Leave me a comment and tell me about it—or tell me your favorite part of this video.
I’ll be in the comments reading and responding. I look forward to reading them.
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This post was previously published on YouTube.
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