Breaking Up With My Type

The High of Being Chosen

I write a lot about how much I’ve grown in my dating choices, and in many ways I have. Then the last two months happened.

I dated a player, which felt like a six-week trial subscription to my old habits that I chose not to renew. That’s the thing about old patterns… they have a way of making themselves feel new. I briefly reconnected with an old fling because familiar can feel strangely safe. Then a friend set me up with a guy who flew across the country to see me. Not my type, but I took the visit as evidence of growth. Then I learned I was a test run before he committed to someone back home.

Years ago, I would have taken that personally. Now I’m just glad it’s not my problem, and that some highly questionable bedroom preferences belong to someone else’s adventure.

Breaking up with my type has been one of the hardest relationships to end. Unfortunately, my type has always been the same: attractive, successful, emotionally unavailable men who could make me feel euphoric one moment and question my entire self-worth the next.

I even tried something different and still ended up with the same result. So why bother breaking up with my type?

There’s something strangely intoxicating about being chosen by the person who always feels just out of reach. Their attention feels scarce, which makes it seem valuable. It feels euphoric - the validation, the surge in confidence, and the temporary feeling that being chosen by them means something about your worth.

It’s the kind of love that makes you forget everything else exists. Your mind goes quiet, logic packs its bags, and for a brief moment everything feels like it might finally be okay. They bring out a version of you that feels reckless and intensely alive, and you love it even if you know it should scare you.

I called it chemistry, which probably explains both my dating history and why I never did particularly well in that subject.

Two people hooked on emotional intensity can look highly compatible, but like sodium and water, they’re bound to explode. Uncertainty becomes obsession. You bend, forgive, and shrink to keep their attention until you lose yourself.

Ironically, the calm, stable, and emotionally available partner you claim to want can feel underwhelming when they finally arrive.

They say real love enters quietly, calm, and without butterflies. Butterflies can signal risk, not always attraction. I understand that. I even believe it… in theory.

The problem is that the second I feel that emotional high, red flags start to look charming instead of concerning. I skim past the warning signs like fine print before signing my life away because a feeling like this is too rare to ignore.

Your “type” is rarely just a preference. More often, it’s what feels familiar, which is a polite way of saying a lot of us are dating some version of our childhood. If your earliest relationships were chaotic, unpredictable, conditional, or built on intermittent reinforcement, those same dynamics can feel strangely attractive later in life. They pull like home, even when they hurt.

That’s why some of us become dopamine daters, drawn to emotional highs that feel more familiar than stability ever did. If you date for dopamine, every spark feels like destiny until it becomes a dumpster fire. Relationships start fast, burn bright, and leave you rereading texts like they hold the meaning of life. The pain becomes part of the addiction, and heartbreak keeps the intensity alive long enough to pass for love.

I still find myself drawn to people I know are wrong for me, but life has taught me that not every attraction needs to become a relationship, and not every red flag requires further investigation.

Some people are best enjoyed in small doses: just enough chemistry to feel the rush, intimacy without vulnerability, connection without dependence, the comfort of being chosen without exposing the fragile parts.

Call it guarded, avoidant, strategic, or provocative. I call it self-preservation - a way to satisfy the desire without giving up control or surrendering all of myself to it.

Maybe life didn’t harden me so much as teach me how to survive. After enough hurt, my nervous system learned to look for danger before it had a chance to arrive. If I could read what someone was feeling, I could stay one step ahead and convince myself I was in control.

I love being in love, but chemistry and potential no longer get unrestricted access to my nervous system. Besides, a little control is cheaper than therapy, tequila, Reiki, chakra alignment, three psychics, and a few rebounds. Now, attraction might get my attention, but it takes more than one exciting evening to keep it.

I’m still learning that peace doesn’t have to feel like boredom and that emotionally available men aren’t hiding a family in Boca Raton or maintaining a multi-state dating portfolio.

I’m also learning that dating outside my type does not guarantee a different outcome. Maybe I don’t need to break up with my type entirely; maybe I just need to admit that I was often more attached to the rush than the relationship.

Growth doesn’t automatically eliminate bad ideas; it just shortens how long you entertain them.

Or, at the very least, it teaches you not to mistake one exciting night for your soulmate.