As a tall woman, and especially as I became a Plus-Sized Tall Woman, I always yearned to date taller guys. It didn’t happen that often, and as far as I remember from my pre-marriage dating days, it really didn’t affect the quality of the relationships or sex. Most of my boyfriends were within an inch or two of my height either way. When I met my ex, part of my hesitation in dating him was the fact that he was 3" shorter than me on the best of days. I like to say that eventually I got over it. And I did, for a while. If we had had a solid and stable marriage, I doubt I would have thought of our height disparity as an issue at all. In the end, it just became another thing I deemed “incompatible” about us.
So when I left that marriage, I decided I would only have ONE physical preference when it came to dating: height. I was done being the larger person in a relationship. It made me feel insecure, gargantuan, ogre-like. I didn’t necessarily LIKE that I felt this way, but I chalked it up to biology. I blamed it on the same societal standards that deem me not conventionally attractive in the first place: women are supposed to be petite and demure next to their partners. I wasn’t even one of “those women” with the 6' or bust cutoff: I just wanted someone my height (or more). And for a while, I believed all of that. I set my Bumble dating preferences accordingly, swiping left on anyone under 5'8" and hesitating on the 5'9" ones, wondering if they were lying about their height because they knew women may reject them if they told the truth. (Man, the fucking irony.)
Here I was, morbidly obese and shouting to the masses through my Twitter jokes and stand-up that men were wrong for writing me off for something as arbitrary as my weight, while *I* was rejecting *them* SOLELY for an arbitrary thing they had no control over. I can lose weight. I could diet and exercise and be a miserable twat all I wanted in order to attract a larger pool of men, but I defiantly DON’T want to, because then how would I know if they would still want me if the weight came back, if the lump in my breast turns out to be cancer after all, if my hair thins or my blond peach fuzz turns dark? Over time, I’ve learned that it’s less of a challenge to find men that want to date me as it is a challenge for men to prove themselves worthy of what has turned out to be a brutally high standard (in every way but physically & materially).
I developed a “type” but swore I would stay open to dating anyone that intrigued me intellectually, even if they weren’t a 6' tall bearded lumberjack bear of a man. I went on exactly one date with one of those. And it was a bizarre and magical night that left me bitter and confused for months afterwards when he ghosted me. He was everything I thought I wanted: big and tall with tree trunk thighs and a smooth, deep voice that became almost a growl in the dark late at night. Quirky, sarcastic, insecure enough that I could tell myself I intimidated him a bit, and a shockingly good kisser.
Over my months of celibacy I became increasingly frustrated with the dating pool. Nothing was clicking. There’s the guy that randomly texts me at 3AM every 6 months to ask if I’m seeing anyone yet, the much younger man that launched into the typical “fat cunt” tirade when I decided I didn’t want to sleep with him after all, the attractive guy that got too wishy-washy when it came time to actually meet, the guy that was ALL OVER me at the movies before I could even get my damn popcorn, the 60-yr old UPS Driver who stopped me in the grocery store to get my number but then told me I looked older with a mask on when he realized I was his daughter’s age, the “last call” guy that looked like Tyson Beckford but I couldn’t trust that I wasn’t just his only option at 1:45AM, and the big cuddly nerdy guy that ghosted me the week of what turned out to be my actual last first date (for now).
And then there was him. Not even sure if we were meeting platonically or if there was something more there until the moment he leaned over and whispered words of encouragement in my ear, his hand lingering on the small of my back for just a moment past “friends.” He drank two whiskeys and a beer that night, never letting on that he’s really not much of a drinker. He suffered through 2 hours of open mic comedy, pointing out that we laughed at the same jokes, later going along with me referring to him as the Charlie Brown to my Lucy. Good-natured, laid back, kind, easy going, compassionate, rational, and in his own words, pint-sized. He is smaller than me in every measurable way from our pant inseams to our hands to our shoe sizes. The opposite of the intense, loud, stubborn, overtly demonstrative men I had been picking for myself. And exactly what I didn’t know I needed.
In months, with one exception, the only meals we’ve eaten have been steak and breakfast. (And gummy bears.) Never have I felt like too much, and never has he felt like not enough, and I mean that both figuratively and physically. Kissing against the wall, the car, the shower, I marvel at how fully masculine he feels. There’s something to be said for a man with that quiet kind of confidence. He doesn’t compete for my attention because he doesn’t need to. I mean literally, his life is his own, and time spent with me is an additive, a bonus, the cherry on top, the reset. We’ve never discussed what this is, if there are others on either side, where we want it to go. It just…is. When I’ve tried to explain it to friends, it seems complicated, but it’s not. We just fit. Our fingers know how to touch one another, our bodies fit together like two hands intertwining, and there is something magical, out-of-body, otherworldly, when we kiss. Our relative height and weight disparities don’t seem to exist at all. I find his face comforting, his mind something to continue being surprised by, his voice soothing, and his body incredibly sexy. Our time together always seems to create a bubble for us, where the outside world fades away, and we are focused only on each other for a while.
All of the things I thought I needed to feel secure in a relationship: constant validation, affirmation, checking in, assurance, I have gradually learned can happen without “my own terms” being placed on them. I can count on one hand the amount of times he’s told me I’m sexy or beautiful in over 6 months, but the impact those 4 or 5 times have carried, because of how and when and the way they were said, have been worth well more than 100 automatic, bland, expected compliments. More important has been the way he compliments my mind. He is by far the more intelligent, worldly, successful one of us, but he makes me feel like we’re on equal footing. His calmness doesn’t make me feel high-strung, but vibrant. The few times I’ve gotten frustrated and lashed out have been met with a rebuttal so gentle that I have no reason not to disarm myself. I am quite fully me, and every time I’ve had a moment of fear at what that looks like to outsiders and what that must feel like to a love interest, he has unknowingly reassured me that perfection is not what interests him.
I don’t even know when or if I’ll publish this, or what I intended it to be when I started writing it. We have so far kept this relationship mostly to ourselves, and even as an anonymous internet person who writes mostly for me, I still feel like I need his permission to share my feelings publicly. Especially when I haven’t shared a lot of this with him yet. I suspect he knows a lot of it intuitively, but I am still at my core an external processor, and sometimes I just need to get my thoughts and feelings OUT, on paper, in a journal, through comedy, into the void. He is far too patient and steady with me to damage his trust in any way, and part of me still likes having him to myself. The other part of me wants to tell everyone that you CAN find romance without losing your autonomy and intimacy without commitment if you stay open enough.
And if you don’t overlook the short guys.
