Why You Should Date A Guy Who’s Well-Read

He listens. He knows how to remain silent and let things soak in, without feeling like he needs to be the one running the conversation. He hears people, he hears you, instead of believing that he should be the one talking, the one in charge.

When you’re talking to him, he’s not zoning off and planning what he’s going to say next. He’s listening to you, processing every word you’re saying, because he wants to be someone you can trust, someone you can count on to hear you and understand you and be the sounding board that you need.

He’s contemplative. He’s aware, not only aware of himself but aware of the things going on around him and the things going on thousands of miles away. He refuses to be ignorant. He refuses to be comfortable in a safe, easy life. He wants to understand that the world is scary and frightening. He wants to know why. He wants to figure out what he can do about it.

He’s curious. He never wants to stop learning. He likes to understand why things work and why people are the way that they are. He wants to be as informed as he can possibly be.

He will never be satisfied with “good enough.” His mind is too expansive for that. He knows that there is so much more he can be than just “good enough.” He wants to be better at his job, he wants to be better with his relationships, he wants to be better about pursuing his passions, he wants to be better about spreading goodness.

He wants to be better with you. He wants you to be with the best man you can possibly be with. He believes that you deserve this. So he reads, he learns, he asks, he questions, he searches. Constantly, endlessly.

He knows that he doesn’t have to be exactly like you in order to understand you. In fact, he loves you all the more for the ways that you are different than him, because you’re teaching him, every day. He not only appreciates the ways that you are different than him – he appreciates the ways that you are better than him. He loves the qualities you have that he does not possess, and he wants to do everything he can to improve his own characteristics.

He expects more from you. Not because you’re not good enough, but because he believes in you so strongly and loves you so much that he’s willing to challenge you to become better. He knows that society expects you to play a certain part – sweet, adorable, shy, subservient, timid, smart but not smarter than him. He doesn’t give a shit. He’s seen the parts of you that are bright and bold and fierce, and he wants nothing more than for you to bring out those parts of yourself and let them become stronger and more pronounced.

He understands how you work, even if he doesn’t. Maybe he doesn’t understand why certain things make you upset or why you’re afraid of certain things. But what he does understand is that you’re a three-dimensional human being who has problems and fears and uncertainties. He’s willing to do everything he can to understand why you work the way that you do, so that he can support and love and encourage you even more than he already does.

He will never stop. Anything. He will never stop learning or asking or trying or working or giving or challenging. But most of all, he will never stop loving you. He is delighted by you and inspired by you. He admires you and looks up to you. He soaks in every word that you say. He knows that you’re filled with endless words that he wants to read.

He will never stop trying with you. Because he knows that the places that you two can go together are infinite.