Why Your "Type" May Be Keeping You Single
Matthew Hussey
Dating coach Matthew Hussey takes on a popular piece of advice: that you should write out an exact list of the physical and emotional traits you want in a partner. He grants that the advice is well-meaning and makes sense on the surface, since it helps people narrow a sea of options and recognize a good match quickly on a dating app. His argument is that it can also hurt people and delay finding someone who will actually make them happy. The question he tries to answer is how to stay selective without letting a rigid type quietly sabotage your love life.
The Atlantic's case that most people don't have a type
Hussey starts from a recent article in The Atlantic titled "Most People Don't Have a Type." He summarizes the journalist's conclusion, drawn from research and interviews with experts, this way: many daters have a list of traits they want in a partner, yet they can be perfectly happy with someone who has few of them. He reads a line from the piece saying that, "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."
Hussey says his own experience agrees. He has coached hundreds of thousands of people over two decades, and he has often seen that the traits people expected to bring them happiness turned out not to matter at all. He also thinks it is a sign of healthy growth when a person's list of must-haves gets shorter with age, because it shows they are learning to tell what matters from what doesn't.
He anticipates two objections. The first is practical: without a type or a list, won't you end up swiping right on everyone, with no way to narrow thousands of options? The second is temperamental: some people like structure and planning, and the idea of "winging it" in dating makes them anxious.
The man who always chased dancers
To show the gap between what people select for and what shapes daily life, Hussey reads a story from his book Love Life. He once spoke to a happily married man who had always pursued dancers, yet whose wife is one of the least coordinated people he has ever known. Asked whether this bothered him, the man laughed. He pointed out how little of his life he spends on a dance floor. His wife, he said, is the best person he has ever met and an amazing mother, and the two of them adore each other's company. Those things affect his life every day.
Hussey turns this into a question for app users: how often are we selecting for things that won't affect our lives every day?
The pessimistic reading: everyone's type is "hot"
Hussey then reads a passage from the article that he finds more troubling. According to the researchers the journalist spoke with, physical attraction matters far more than most people realize. If a couple is lucky, infatuation sets in. The article describes this as an obsession-like state in which you think about the person a lot, notice them, and want to be physically close. Once that spark ignites, motivated reasoning takes over, which the article describes as "seeing what you want to see."
Hussey notes that this seems to conflict with the idea that people use apps to find specific hobbies or interests. His reading is that people go looking for "hot," and once they find someone they have a giant crush on, they convince themselves after the fact that everything about that person is great. He calls this one of the more pessimistic, almost fatalistic points in the article: it says we don't really have a type, except that everyone's type is hot, and once we find hot we will make anyone our type.
He rejects that interpretation for two reasons. It leaves people feeling disempowered about attracting others, especially people who don't see themselves as "animalistically hot." It also gives cover to people who want to dig in their heels about who they are attracted to. He imagines someone saying they like guys with tattoos and piercings and won't suddenly start liking a clean-cut, preppy jock. He also acknowledges that dating apps are designed to have you judge people on their looks first and don't let you swipe for personality.
Filter on behavior, not trivia
Hussey's answer to the planner who fears hundreds of pointless dates is that he isn't telling anyone to date everyone. The danger he names is over-filtering for trivia: height, exact personality adjectives, niche hobbies, small impressions of a person, the vibe from a single message, or a verdict based on one slightly awkward first date or phone call.
He proposes narrowing the pool in three ways instead:
- Effort. Do they ask thoughtful questions? Do they respond consistently? Do they suggest a real plan?
- Emotional maturity signals. Do they speak respectfully about past partners? Can they express something beyond surface-level banter? Do they handle disagreement well if friction comes up?
- Baseline attraction. The test is not whether the person is your usual type, your fantasy, or "insanely hot." It is simply: could you see yourself kissing this person? If not, don't continue. If so, explore.
He sums up the approach this way: rather than filtering ruthlessly at the front end, be selective about someone's behavior but curious about their personality. He also speaks to viewers who have ended up with the wrong person even though that person was exactly their type and had every trait on the list, yet couldn't make them happy, or made them miserable.
You don't have a type, you have a story
For viewers still protesting that they don't want to be attracted to a different kind of person, Hussey asks whether they are trying to satisfy their ego or find love, because the strategies differ.
His main reframe is that a person doesn't have a type so much as a story: a story of how their life was supposed to go and who they were supposed to end up with. He acknowledges how hard it is to let go of that story, but argues that this kind of adaptability is where happiness lies. Someone might expect to fall for a person who looks a certain way, lives on the other side of the world, or is nothing like the people they grew up with, and then meet someone who lives three streets from where they grew up and is completely right for them. What matters, he says, is whether their vision for their life is flexible enough to let them love that person, or even get to know them in the first place.
Why in-person time matters
Hussey says those feelings often need in-person contact to develop, for a few reasons. First, "animation creates attraction": the way someone moves, gestures, and emotes. Second, repeated exposure matters, because you often have to see someone in several contexts before you notice what is attractive about them. Third, and in his view most important, people need to get over themselves.
Ego as the main obstacle
Hussey suggests that ego may be the biggest thing stopping people who are slaves to their type from finding love. In his words, ego makes people "settle in all of the wrong ways" and stops them "settling in all of the right ways." He describes this as the logical inverse of the article's point. With a crush, people justify everything about the person. Without immediate fireworks, or when something doesn't fit their type, they swing to the other extreme and become judgmental.
He offers a litmus test for dates. If you notice something you don't like, ask yourself whether you are writing the person off for something that shouldn't be a deal breaker at this stage. Then ask whether you are only making it a deal breaker because you're frustrated that you aren't feeling what you want to feel yet.
Social pressure and being watched
Hussey argues that much of this ego comes from social pressure. People feel a need to match the kinds of partners their friends have seen them with or chasing before. "We don't get attracted to people in a vacuum," he says. He believes social media makes this worse, especially the habit of "soft launching" relationships on Instagram, because many more people can now judge your choices. Even if nobody says anything, you may still feel judged. He suggests asking yourself whether you would be as invested in keeping your type if no one were watching or judging.
Whether the pressure is external or internal, whether it's about who you think you should be with, who you feel entitled to, or who you think will make you "enough" if you win them, Hussey concludes that much of who people choose has less to do with who is right for them and more to do with insecurity. His view is that a person's idea of their type widens as their insecurity shrinks.
What he hopes the video changes
Hussey doesn't claim a video will suddenly make anyone attracted to different people, and he says plainly that it doesn't work that way. His hope is more modest. He wants viewers to "unclench" their fist a little around what they think they're looking for, leave more room for curiosity, follow interesting feelings toward people they wouldn't expect to be drawn to even when they don't fully understand them, and give themselves more leeway to spend time with those people. He closes by asking viewers whether they have ever been attracted to someone who wasn't their type.
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.
So, 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 that it's a sign of healthy growth if our list of must-haves goes down as we age. We have to start discerning better what matters and what doesn't.
I wrote about this person that I met in my book Love Life. And I'll read it to you because it's very relevant to this. 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 when it comes to a dating app that aren't 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 I spoke with." I being the writer. "If two people in a relationship are lucky, infatuation will set in, an obsession-like mental state in which you find yourself thinking about the person a lot, 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."
This is interesting because it almost seems to conflict with the point about us going on apps looking for someone who has certain hobbies or interests. What this seems to suggest is we go on there looking for hot, and then when we find hot, when we find someone that we have this 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 that 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 of things, because for one, it makes us feel disempowered when it comes to attracting other people, especially as we don't identify as being animalistically hot to people. But it also, I think, validates our wanting to dig our own heels in when it comes to the people we're attracted to.
People want to say, "Matthew, I'm attracted to what I'm attracted to. I like guys with tattoos and piercings. I'm not going to suddenly become attracted to some clean-cut, preppy jock." Now, that person might ask, "What would you say to someone who very much has a physical type?" And these apps, the dating apps, which are ultimately designed for you to judge someone on physique first, don't allow you to swipe for personality.
Or, someone out there might say, "Matthew, I like having a plan when I'm dating. If I open up the pool too widely, I'm going to be giving any man or woman a shot, and 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, whether it's exact personality adjectives, niche hobbies, micro impressions we have of a person, vibes that we get from one message, or even judging someone on a slightly awkward first date or a phone call.
The solution to this is to narrow the pool by one, effort. So, do they ask thoughtful questions? Do they respond consistently? Do they suggest a real plan? The second is we can narrow it down based on emotional maturity signals. So, in conversation, do they speak respectfully about past partners? Can they express something beyond surface-level banter? Do they handle disagreement well if any kind of friction comes up?
And three, narrow it down by 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. So, 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 video knowing that you have ended up with the wrong person in the past, even though they were completely your type. They had all the traits you look for in a person, but ultimately they couldn't make you happy, or worse, they made you utterly miserable. Maybe you're heartbroken over that person right now.
If that is you and you're going through that heartbreak right now, I have a free webinar called Heal from Heartbreak. You can watch it today at heartbreakplan.com. In this training, I give you some of my best advice for moving forward from heartbreak. This is stuff that I used as a personal survival strategy when I went through the worst heartbreak of my life. I promise you at the end of this hour, you're going to feel a lot better than you do right now. So, go check that out at heartbreakplan.com.
Now, some of you at this point in the video will still be 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 of the things I encourage people to look at when trying to dislodge from this over-concretized idea of their type is to help them realize you don't have a type, you have a story. A story of the way 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 that kind of adaptability is where happiness lies.
We may have thought that we were going to meet someone that looks like this or who lived on the other side of the world or who was nothing like the people that we grew up with. And then we could meet someone who lives three streets from where we grew up and is totally right for us. The question is whether we can be flexible enough in our vision for our life to allow ourselves to love that person or to even get to know that person in the first place. This is the kind of flexibility in our vision that creates happiness in life.
But to develop those feelings, we often need to be in person with someone for a number of reasons. Firstly, animation creates attraction. The way someone moves and gestures and emotes. We need repeated exposure because you often need to see someone in multiple contexts to see 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 a slave to our type is ego.
Ego gets in the way. Ego makes us settle in all of the wrong ways and it stops us settling in all of the right ways. It's almost the logical inverse of what's talked about in the article, which is that if I have a crush on someone, I will justify everything else about them because in context I'll see it as great. When we don't immediately feel fireworks with someone or there's something about them that we don't quite think is right for us and our type, we swing all the way to the other side where we become judgmental about that person.
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 should not be a deal breaker right now? And am I only turning it into a deal breaker because I'm frustrated and annoyed that I'm not feeling exactly what I want to be feeling at this stage?
We also have to factor in that a huge amount of our ego comes from social pressure. Our ego feels a desire to conform to the kinds of people our friends have seen us with or going for in the past. We have this problem in life of being observed. We don't get attracted to people in a vacuum. And this is even worse, by the way, in the age of social media and soft launching relationships on Instagram. There is now a much larger pool of people who can judge you for your choices. Even if they never say it out loud, it might be in our heads that we're being judged for our choices. And it's worth asking yourself, if no one was watching or judging, would I be as invested in trying to maintain this type as I am right now?
Whether it's because of outside social pressure or it's because of our own internal pressure of who we think we should be with, who we feel entitled to, or who we think is going to make us enough if we can get them, so much of who we pick is not about who is right for us. It is about our insecurity. And our concept of our type will expand as our insecurity lessens in life.
I know that this video isn't going to magically go out into the world and be attracted to different people. That's not how this works. My hope, though, 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 a bit more room for curiosity. That it encourages you to follow interesting feelings that you might have 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 these 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 will be in the comments reading and responding right now. I look forward to reading them.
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