Why You Don’t Have A Type

Blondes, brunettes, and gingers; long hair and no hair; flat chested and big bosomed; tall and short; petite, athletic, voluptuous; the punk girl, the book worm, the ambitious professional, the stoner, the drinker, the slacker, the nerd; liberal and conservative; black, white, Asian, and Latino?you?ve dated all types. At first you thought it was a phase; an impulse to experiment while young. But as you moved on from your college you still found yourself attracted to many kinds of woman.

Most of your friends are settled in their tastes and preferences, and they seem to feel some security in dating a particular type of girl. This is consistent with society as a whole. For most people, their dating choices are limited by class, career, and education. But you tend to go outside your social sphere; you have gone in pursuit of women that most of your friends would consider completely wrong for you.

You are one of the precious few who don?t have a type. But what is it that draws you to the women you date?

It is no big mystery. It is the same thing that drives us all. With you and those like you the force of this thing is exceptional?to the point of being the overriding determinant of your dating choices. What is this thing? It is danger. That is what keeps you going after women: the danger, the peril, the adventure of it all.

Sexual release is incidental. You must know by now the ease with which you can get yourself off. But there is nothing like the tremulous uncertainty of that first approach?talking, smiling, laughing, staring, flirting, in short, entering the subtle and unconscious negotiations over some future carnal encounter. Nor the exhilarating sensation that washes over you the first time you walk into a strange girl?s bedroom.

Indeed, the stranger, the more unfamiliar and forbidden, the better. This is why you like to mix things up. Going out with a woman whose life, feeling, and point of view you know nothing about makes for high adventure. No matter how many times you?ve been out, no matter how much chit-chat you?ve engaged in, dating a woman who is nothing like you or your friends or anyone in your social circle is risky; she embodies the kind of risk that you cannot help being attracted to.

It is not unlike the feeling you get in a brothel. You know you have no business there, that it goes against all that you have been raised to believe; but somehow the very fact that you know it is forbidden by some ethical or moral code makes it irresistible.

Modern civilization keeps most of us thoroughly insulated from violence and discord. For the first time since our species has been on this planet, there are large groups of men who can, if they choose, live a life completely free of danger. The desire for danger nevertheless remains in our limbic system. For those of us privileged enough to be free from want, the hunt and quest for women is the only kind of danger that we can practically expose ourselves to. Pursuing someone who is like you in nearly every way is no danger at all. Going outside the confines of your social world is where the real hazard lies.