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Decoding the details behind the common girl claim: “nerdy guys make the best boyfriends!”
He has passions beyond sports, video games, and boobs.
Being a “nerd” in the “girls love nerds” sense isn’t about understanding all of The Big Bang Theory, it’s about having interests beyond those of the typical brute boy set.
Sports, videos games, boobs and the like are perfectly fine, but food, travel, politics or urban farming represent a world view that’s as respectable as it is sexy. Nerds have “their things” and they’re not influenced by whatever the frat president is all about this month. More often than not they come from a dad’s woodworking hobby, mom’s love of cooking or some article he read in science monthly while everyone else on the bus was making out.
He actually pursues those passions versus talking about how much he likes them on his couch/The Facebook.
Nerds on are message boards about the new restaurants in town and likely have a list of “places to eat” in Excel chart form. They don’t just have interests, they pursue those interests, whether or not they have a group of people at hand to join.
Behind this, as with many elements of the nerd personality, is a general lack of care about what other people think. You like Russian classical music, awesome. You follow that with a passion and don’t care who thinks it’s lame. Same goes for World War II history or computer programming or architecture of the world. Nerds don’t put “being cool” over being themselves.
He worked hard to fairly hard through most high school and all of college.
You know who thinks high school is a waste of time: jerks. Nerds, on the other hand, care about their grades because they care about both their future (as in, ability to do well in this world) and they care about their legacy (as in, don’t want to be thought of as jerks).
Thinks of all the coolest guys you knew in high school – the bad boys, the class cutters, the kids who smoked in the areas where you weren’t supposed to smoke. How many of them are successful guys you’d want to introduce to your parents?
He’s (probably) never been a quarterback, prom king, or president of the frat.
There’s something unassuming about the “nerd” classification. It’s not that they couldn’t be in charge of something – be it an athletic team or social circle – it’s just that nerds don’t need that stuff. They let the other guys win because winning isn’t particularly their thing. That said, many a nerd probably ranked very high in their high school debate team or Model UN group.
Key here is that these guys were never a part of an organization that was worshiped by groups of women. As such, they never got away with treating women poorly because they had their “star status” to fall back on. This explains why they’re nice.
He’s not particularly mean, and he doesn’t like people who are.
See above, for starters. First, it’s that nerds have never had an excuse to be mean because they’ve never been part of something that was bigger than appropriate behavior (read: the college lacrosse team). But beyond that, nerds just don’t get off on being bullies. They’ve been bullied, and so they support the little guys out there, regardless of whether or not they’ve “late bloomed” out of that category.
This whole position comes from the fact that nerds have lived a life without tons of friends or bros, so they don’t need to be friends with jerks for the sake of having tons of friends. They’d much rather have no friends than crappy friends because they’ve survived having no friends in the past.
His goal is to look fine every day and somewhat good when it matters. Other than that he doesn’t care much about his hair style or outfits.
It’s a general lack of vanity that makes a nerd a good man and therefore great boyfriend. He’s all about everything but what he looks like. That leaves time for things like thinking about you, complimenting you, and paying attention to you above most else. This is a simple but important factor. It’s not about the fact that the girl should be the image-focused one in a relationship, it’s about the fact that the guy (But really both parties, ladies. You’re not off the hook) should be about substance, not image and status.
He has plans for the future, and he’s excited about making them happen.
They may be plans for a comic book convention next weekend or plans for a trip to India next Fall. Bottom line, nerds go do things that they want to do. That’s as basic as it sounds for a reason. They’re not tied to watching a specific game because that’s what all the guys are doing. They don’t need to sit on the couch all day because they’re so hung-over. Nerds have initiative because they’re driven by their interests, not what they believe they should be doing because on the cool kids’ schedule. (note: fantastic men also watch sports games and get hungover. These are not mutually exclusive to jerks.) Point is, because they’re not at all tied to the cool kids’ behavior, they can geek out about their plans like none other. This is adorable for many reasons, but at the core it’s the fact that nerds aren’t boring.
You make him nervous, but that doesn’t stop him from pursuing you, albeit nervously.
Again, it’s the whole “I’ve never been cool, so I’m not going to start trying now thing.” It’s a total lack of confidence that bizarrely manifests as a strong and quiet confidence. Nerds aren’t afraid to fail, so when they want something – in this case, to date you – they put that want above their own pride.
This doesn’t mean nerds don’t make awkward mistakes in the dating realm, but that’s what makes them so endearing. You can tell just how much they care by what they’re willing to risk to make that phone call or send that e-mail.
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I would agree with a lot of these points. I’ve dated several nerds, but ultimately married a nerd-athlete hybrid. I do think that they don’t play the games a “cool guy” will play such as negging or acting like they don’t care, etc… However, I have met plenty of nerds who are mean and/or pretentious about the things that they like.
This is SO, SO true!! I agree with Erin that some guys who classify themselves as nerds are not like this, but when girls say they want to date a nerd, this is definitely what they are looking for!!
I love this. I kinda sums up the “typical” guy most girls looks for. Perhaps the “nerds” are becoming the “normal” guy now?
Nerds are not becoming anything. Other guys are trying to adopt the only desirable characteristics of nerds, trying to make “nerds” cool or something. Such guys are posers more often than not.
My boyfriend plays D&D and goes to Renaissance reenactments. I accompanied him to D&D Sun. night and was amused and fascinated by the intensity of the gamers. But mostly bored because damn, that game is COMPLICATED. One of the gamers asked if I liked anything nerdy and I felt soooooo lame when I shrugged and said ‘Harry Potter’. Like, so not cool. I’m such an outsider.
When I say “I love nerds!” I mean I adore D&D players who are also successful men, shy, exceedingly intelligent, they do not give a hoot about social norms, and have not had many sexual partners.
Don’t give a hoot about social norms. Most guys say that openly and try not to care for the sake of it. I hate it when people use nerd in this context because ‘nerd’ actually describes a very small amount of people, and almost all the time is not what they really mean. Guys who fit the description you posted have other traits that can be deemed unattractive. It’s like girls just want guys with certain ‘nerdy’ characteristics, which gives these guys the illusion that they’re nerds and therefore change the meaning of nerd, which gets actual nerds’s hopes up only to be torn down by girls who just can’t deal with some of their hobbies/quirks/etc.
The idea that nerds aren’t bullies because they’ve been bullied themselves is wrong. Get a group of nerds together and they form the same social hierarchies as any other group, including both cool kids and bullies.
Another Smart post from you Admin 🙂
Fun to read article. Challenging a social norm I blog at http://spiqy.com/native-remedies