A conundrum

You may have seen (or heard) one of the many recent reports about a study about what kind of guy women really go for. It turns out that woman want a big muscular man for affairs or a quick roll in the hay, but they want the skinnier guys for relationships. This is an important discovery along the lines that water is wet, things fall down, and if you drop a broken egg you won't get an egg that's new. Keep making brilliant statements like that and you'll bring and asDUHroid down on your head.

I rank among the skinny. I don't inspire instant lust. Ok, not completely true. I don't inspire instant lust in women. Guys on the other hand... Anyway, I need a couple of months of exposure before a woman starts to express interest. But I can't achieve that through dating.

The longer I remain in DC the more I see why dating beyond college is so tricky. It's summed up nicely in the scientific report. See, a lot of us want a lasting romantic relationship but people don't want to date the people we want to end up with.

Date, I've learned, translates to "someone who gets me so hot and bothered that we're having sex by the end of the first date, or second at least." I'm finding that if someone isn't immediately madly attracted to you there isn't gonna be a second date.

This is different from the way I understood the term when I first moved to DC*. Back then I thought you were supposed to spend a few dates getting to know someone, decide if this is someone you want to keep around for awhile, and then jump them. Silly me.

But this gets me back to my original point. You can be as funny and charming and confident as you like but unless you have the rippling muscles (and the testosterone and pheromones that go with them) you're not gonna get the woman that fired up in the short period of time they seem to demand. The people with normal builds need more prolonged exposure to someone to make that connection.

So, I'm asking, how do we get past this? How does the average person, male or female, get that exposure they need to start a romantic relationship if they don't have the pheromones necessary for immediate lust? We've all heard the warnings against dating coworkers. That leaves us with what?

Don't think I'm basing this off of my miserable dating life. No, no. I've come to this conclusion by listening to the women I've met both digitally and in the real world. They seem to expect an instant spark. Many refuse to go on a second date if they haven't been driven to lust on the first. A few will give a guy a second try, but still want something to happen fast.

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*I'm not blaming DC for this. I lived in Kansas City before this and they just don't have enough single women to learn better.