Chapter 5: "Who": Redefining Your Type & The List

Amanda had a type, and if you asked her to describe him she could’ve done it in her sleep. Highly educated, the kind of guy with a professional degree, a doctor or a lawyer or an accountant. The man also had a sense of style of course.

She'd go on three, four, five dates with a guy and hit the same two endings every time. Either there was no spark, so she ended it. Or there was a huge spark, and then he ended it. Round and round she would go, until she started to wonder if the problem wasn’t them after all…

When she got to School of Dating, we made her do an exercise she rolled her eyes at: write down her top three non-negotiables. Not the wish list she could rattle off without thinking, the three things she could not build a life without. And then we said the sentence that almost made her cancel us: chemistry doesn't get to be one of them.

Then she figured out something I think about all the time. A lot of what she'd been calling chemistry was really just anxiety. And that electric, is-he-going-to-text-me-back feeling she'd spent years reading as this must be love was, most of the time, just her nervous system doing the same thing it always did.

So she tried it our way. She said yes to a guy who had all three non-negotiables and almost none of her usual spark. He wasn't her type but she took the leap anyway.

She's engaged now.

The List You Never Wrote Down

Most people I coach have never truly written their list down (unless asked to). But that doesn't mean they don't have one. It lives rent free in their head, put together over the years from moments they never chose on purpose. Usually a little of the last person who broke their heart. The highlights of the couple in the movie they watched too many times at sixteen. A smidge of whatever their parents' marriage looked like growing up.

In many cases, they have never really written it all down, but regardless it’s running the show, deciding who gets a second date and who gets a kind, "I'm just not feeling it."

Or maybe you're on the other side of the equation. You've never written a list in your life, because lists feel clinical and you'd rather just know it when you feel it. Which sounds romantic right up until you notice that "I'll know it when I feel it" has mostly introduced you to people who felt amazing for about six weeks then turned into practical serial killers (kidding… kind of).

Two very different people, but with the same problem. One list is forty items long and nobody can top it. The other list doesn't exist, so anybody with a pulse and a good first date gets through. The issue is neither one is actually helping you find your person.

So let me lay the whole thing out up front, and then we'll walk through it piece by piece. Everything you could ever want in a person falls into one of three buckets. Preferences, the things you'd like. Non-negotiables, the things you actually need. And dealbreakers, the tiny handful of things that end it no matter how great everything else is. And in all my years of coaching, almost every list I've ever seen lives entirely in bucket one while swearing up and down it's bucket two.

Preferences are your type. Tall. Funny. Loves to travel. Beard or no beard (I have opinions, we'll leave them out of this). Someone who gets your humor, likes your music, and would never make you sit through a three-hour documentary on a Friday night. None of that is bad. Of course you want some of that, we all do. But none of it belongs on the list, because none of it tells you one single thing about whether this person could actually build a life with you.

I'm going to say something that gets me in trouble every time I say it. Buckle up ok? Funny is great and all, but it’s not a character quality. I know, I know. Humor is wonderful, and I married someone who makes me laugh every single day. But "they're so funny" has nothing to do with how a person handles conflict, or money, or a hard season, or you on your worst day. It is a lovely preference, but it is still a preference. And I have watched people give a decade of their life to someone who makes them laugh and doesn’t have Godly character, just because funny felt like a non-negotiable.

While I'm being unpopular: politics is not a non-negotiable. Neither is what denomination someone grew up in, and neither is height. I have watched more people filter out a genuinely godly, kind, teachable human being over a couple of inches or a church background than I could ever count. Those are preferences too. You're allowed to have them. You're just not allowed to pretend they're the foundation (and before you start talking back to me in your head, we do have multiple podcasts episodes on these topics in case you want to dive into more of our thoughts here).

Which brings us to the real, truly important list, and I want you to fully note how short it's about to get.

Your non-negotiables are comprised of character qualities. Just character. How many? Five of them, max. Not fifteen. Five things about who a person actually is that you cannot build a life without. And the easiest place I know to find them is not a dating book, it's Galatians 5. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. That's the whole menu of what God grows in a person. Read it slowly, and notice which ones feel especially important to you…. Maybe they are the ones you've been starving for in the people you've dated.

A great question to ask yourself when you make this list is this “By putting this quality on the list, would the relationship bring me closer to God and be in line with values I have for my life?”

If I could put one thing on everybody's list, it would be this one: teachable. Someone who can hear you when you say “you hurt me” without treating it like you personally attacked them. Someone who is always being formed in the image of God, and knows loving feedback will bring them closer to Christ. I have said this to hundreds of clients and I'll say it to you…You can build a life with almost anybody who is teachable. You cannot build one with anybody who isn’t humble or willing to grow, no matter how many of your boxes they check.

That's the trade this whole chapter is asking you to make. The list you've been keeping is an outward list. God has been telling us since Samuel went looking for a king that he doesn't choose that way. "People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart" (1 Samuel 16:7). Your list should look where He looks.

And then there's the third bucket, and FYI it's even smaller on purpose. Dealbreakers are the few things that end it even when the character is wonderful. A person can be kind and teachable and full of every fruit on that list and still be someone you cannot marry. I keep these to three, and I call them the three F's.

First up is faith. I want to be careful here, because this is the one people get wrong in both directions. Some set the bar way too low ("they said they’re a Christian on their profile, so we're good"). And some set it so specific that no real human could ever come close to meeting it. So let me tell you what I'm actually looking for when I say faith.

I'm looking for somebody who is consistently growing with God. Not somebody who has arrived (nobody has), and not a snapshot of where they are this month. A direction. Are they closer to Jesus than they were a year ago? Are they still moving? Peter says it exactly: not just that these qualities are yours, but that they're increasing (2 Peter 1:5-8). The bar isn't arrived. It's increasing.

You can't see that on a first date, but you can catch hints of it. Gary Thomas puts it this way: if someone never talks about God, they're probably not talking to God."So simply put, does Jesus come up pretty regularly? Does God make it into how they talk about their week, their decisions, the thing they're stressed about? And one of my favorite early questions, usually by date two or three: "Who is Jesus to you?" Not "are you a Christian." "Who is Jesus to you" makes a person actually get a bit vulnerable, because the answer requires them to get personal. Sometimes you end up learning more from the thirty seconds after you ask it than from going to a month of church together.

After that, it takes time. Sigh, I know it’s not what you want to hear but it’s true! Real investment with God shows up over months, and it reveals itself in who they surround themselves with. Who are their people? Who do they call when something goes wrong? The community a person keeps will tell you a lot about the faith they actually have.

Now for the part where we get ourselves in trouble. We decide what faith is supposed to look like, and then we go hunting for that exact picture. For a lot of the women I coach, the picture is a worship leader. A man who leads a Bible study and journals his prayers and has a quiet time that looks just like hers. For a lot of the men, the picture is Beth Moore (JJ had that one memorized, if you remember). A woman with a highlighter in her Bible and a women's group she runs, who can pray out loud in a room full of people without flinching. And when a kind, godly, growing person shows up who doesn't come with the guitar, or the highlighter, or a fish on the car, or a Bible staged on the coffee table, they get filed under "not spiritual enough" before dessert.

That's not a standard, that's you projected onto somebody else. You're asking a person to have your relationship with God, and nobody has your relationship with God. Everyone's walk with Him looks different, because He made everyone different. Your job isn't to find somebody who does faith the way you do it. Your job is to find somebody who is genuinely, consistently growing with him, in whatever shape that takes on them.

Don't put your quiet time on somebody else and call it a standard. You're not looking for perfect. You're looking for perfectable, as my friend Ben Stuart likes to say.

The next F is Family. Whether you both want children, or both don't. This one sounds obvious and gets skipped constantly, because it feels too heavy for date three and too awkward for date ten, and by date thirty you're in love and hoping the other person will come around. Spoiler: they usually don't.

And last but not least, finance. But let me clarify, by finance I don't mean whether they have debt. I mean whether you two want to build the same kind of life. Do you see money the same way? Do you want the same pace, the same size of life, the same relationship to generosity? Two people can love each other deeply and still want to live two completely different lives.

You've already met the cost of moving that first line. Remember Ella from chapter three? She dated the kind, steady guy who was really good to her, but the one thing missing was his faith. She told herself she could never find a guy with these qualities so she stayed and hoped the faith would come. She convinced herself he would be passionate about Jesus eventually. But he wasn’t. That's what it costs when you sacrifice the quality of faith, even for someone who has a lot of other things going for him.

So that's it. That's the whole list. A few preferences you hold loosely. Five pieces of character you hold tightly. Three dealbreakers you don't move for anyone. Written out it could all easily fit on an index card.

I know what the Overthinker in you is doing right now, because I've done it too. You're thinking this list is too thin, that surely you need more protection than that. But I’ll tell you something wild… the thin list is the protection. Forty items keeps everyone out, including the right one. Five pieces of character lets exactly the right kind of person in, and it tells you fast and clearly when someone isn't.

A few months before that first FaceTime with Kait, I had two lists. Every person does. There's the one you'd say out loud in small group, and there's the one you keep guarded somewhere in your chest and would rather not say at all. Where they overlap is probably the real list.

My small-group list was actually true. I wanted a woman who genuinely loved Jesus more than she would ever love me, and had that foundation before I got there. Not a Christian worldview. I grew up in the Bible Belt, I wasn't interested in a worldview. I wanted someone I wouldn't have to pastor, who would challenge me in my faith instead. And kind. Graceful. Because I can be thoughtless, move fast, get distracted, and I knew I'd need somebody with grace to spare.

The other list went like this. Athletic, because I connect through play and I'm competitive about everything, especially Catan. Funny. Fit, and I'll just say it, because I wanted to be very attracted to my wife. And emotionally chill. Low maintenance. Didn't have that many needs.

Survey a hundred men and "not high maintenance" is top three for every one of them. The first layer of that preference is fair enough at face value. The second layer is the one we don't say. We don't want to be challenged. We don't want someone who's going to require more than we really want to give. Which is, of course, the exact thing that would make us grow.

Kait had the need-to-haves. She missed a good number of the nice-to-haves and the fun-to-haves. She is not into practical jokes, she is definitely bougie, and everything in Kait-land is planned to the minute. Four months into dating, on a day trip to Big Bear, she had her perfectly written agenda scheduling us to leave at 6:15 AM. I said something closer to 6:15 to 6:30 was realistic, and we had a thirty-minute argument about whether a departure can be a time or has to be a window. We have had the same fight more or less every month since (and we won't mention the moments where she runs late on her own schedule). What I didn't want to admit about that Big Bear fight is that I could have packed the night before, set the alarm for 5:15 AM instead of 6:02 (just enough time to get dressed and splash water on my face), and been in the car at 6:15 saying let's go. The pushback was me being asked for more than I'd signed up to give. What I was calling high maintenance was a normal need, and I was a half emotionally dead guy who couldn't meet it yet. A lot of what guys like me call high maintenance is a normal, healthy thing to ask of a person. The label is how an immature guy says no without having to admit he's saying no.

The word husbandry means to farm. When you marry a woman you inherit a field, and some of the rocks and the broken fences in it were left there by other men. She inherits a field too. Mine came with a lot of rocks. Whether a need is high maintenance or completely normal, whether another man left the rock there or she did, it's in your field now, and the job is to tend it. You can stand at the edge of it and say I didn't cause this. Or you can get in there with her, not as her savior, she's responsible for her own healing, but as somebody who helps. Resenting the field is just standing at the edge of it. I chose the field. I just didn't know how big the rocks were.

If I wrote one word on the index card today it would be godly. JP Pokluda says look for the godliest person you know, and people hate that advice because it's so simple, right up until they picture the life behind that person. And the funny thing is, at 26 the word would have been the same. The word on top was right. The list under it was the problem.

But What If I’m Not Attracted to Them?

Okay. I can hear the objection from here, because I hear it on almost every coaching call. “Kait, that’s all great, but what if I do everything you just said and I’m just not attracted to them?”

Let me answer that with my own first date with JJ, because I almost didn’t go on it.

He was six years younger than me, and I had never once dated a guy six years younger than me. He had blue hair. He lived in a different state. And I told you about Amanda earlier because, for most of my twenties, I was Amanda. If there wasn’t an immediate spark, I was out. And every single time there was one, it led me somewhere unhealthy. Instant chemistry had never once gotten me to a good relationship, not in eighteen years of trying. It took me years to admit my type was the problem, and one conversation with Dr. Henry Cloud to finally do something about it (you’ll remember him from chapter one).

So by the time JJ showed up, I was all in on my experiment of dating the unexpected and stopping giving my heart away to the first guy who swept me off my feet. The goal was to give regular pretty great guys a real shot. Which meant that even with every reason to say no, I had one reason to say yes, and it’s something I now tell every client: you can give almost anyone sixty minutes of your time. Especially on FaceTime. You’re not marrying them, you’re just having a conversation. So I went into the first date completely neutral on purpose, and made myself not decide about him before we’d even met.

Much to my surprise, I enjoyed myself. He was more mature than I expected. He was spunky, he was funny, and he asked the kind of questions that made me actually think. I caught myself smiling and hung up intrigued to know more.

Now the honest part, and the truth the earlier chapters skipped. Chapter one told you I found it wildly attractive that he didn’t care what anyone thought of him. That was true. And yet, it is also true that I was not physically drawn to him at first, and both of those can live in the same person at the same time, which is the whole reason I’m telling you this.

Please please please hear me on this- it was not that he wasn’t good looking. He was (he IS!). But for me it came down to things that I was not expecting… things I would not have initially been drawn to… like his style. The blue hair. The black earring. A whole skater-punk situation with baggy pants and clothes that did not match on purpose. But you also have to understand who was on the other end of that FaceTime. Before Heart of Dating, I worked in high fashion in New York City at Barneys New York, going to Fashion Week like Anne Hathaway in the Devil Wears Prada. I have always had a passion for fashion, even in the 5th grade when I wore a different outfit and hairstyle almost every day. So all that to say, I’ve found myself drawn to a certain kind of style, and when JJ appeared, my friend it was not it.

About a month into FaceTiming, it got worse before it got better. JJ came to visit me in LA so we could meet in person for the first time. Everything was mostly great but there is a story I had to tell because these little moments are the things we don’t want to admit impact us, when they actually do.

We went to In-N-Out as a late night snack after a concert. I’m pretty positive it was his first time eating a beautiful double double, but even still I am afraid to admit that that man ate that burger like it had wronged him. Chomp, chomp, chomp. He even licked his fingers when he was done. Then he went to throw our trash away, and the can was full, so he pushed it down with one hand, dropped ours in with the other, and walked back to the car without washing either one. I’m not proud of how much that bothered me. But it bothered me a lot. As Gen Z might say “it gave me the ick”.

So why on earth did I keep going? So many people date and get the ick and it’s like a barrier goes up between them and the other person. They can’t unsee what they saw, they can’t unthink the thoughts they now have about them, and before they know it they sabotage the entire thing over something so seemingly insignificant.

With JJ everything else was there, and with my dating history the everything else mattered way more than the ick. I had more fun with him than I’d had with anyone in years. The friendship was real. I felt safe with him in a way I couldn’t explain yet. And I could tell, even that early on, that his love for Jesus and for people was pure and not in any way performative. He’s basically a golden retriever in a person, with a smidge of Jim Carrey thrown in.

Not to mention I had friends, my friend Elyse Mahan especially, who gave me a kick in the pants reminding me to take my own medicine and keep dating the unexpected and give the good guy a real chance.

That season is when I finally understood something I now teach every client. Attraction has five parts, and I had spent my whole life measuring the wrong ones too highly.

The first one is personality, which is really just the foundation of friendship. Do you enjoy them? Do you want to be around them? Marriage is friendship on fire so enjoying being around them is so important. Emotional attraction is the second: do you feel safe with them, could you tell them the worst thing about yourself and not get made to feel small? Then spiritual (which is arguable most important), are you drawn to the Jesus in them (we just spent a whole section on that bar, so I won’t repeat it). Intellectual, do they make you think? And last, physical. Yes, it is important. But no, it isn’t the whole thing.

With JJ, four of the five were lighting up like a Christmas tree. The fifth one, physical, was sitting somewhere around a 3.5 out of 5. Not because he wasn’t good looking. He was. It was the style and my ick from his eating that was dragging the number down.

And this is the part that surprises my clients every time. You don’t need a 5/5 on physical attraction. On a scale of one to five, you need about a 3, a 2.9 if we’re being nitpicky. That’s it. If there’s at least that much there, and the other four are real, it can absolutely without a doubt grow. I was at a 3.5 with a guy in baggy pants and a black earring, which, it turns out, is plenty. (If you want the full version of how we score all five, that’s a School of Dating thing, and yes, I’m aware I just teased you.)

The other thing you need to know is about chemistry, because that rush you’ve been waiting for feels amazing, but ultimately has an expiration date. Like a good glass of cold milk, it will eventually sour and not taste so good after some time. Chemistry is infatuation. Gary Thomas puts its shelf life at about twelve to eighteen months.* It feels real, it is real, and yet it is also incredibly temporary. That’s why giving it too much weight can ultimately leave you feeling shell shocked and confused when it’s gone. And too often than not people walk away as soon as all the warm and fuzzies fade.

Then I flew to Seattle to visit him, about sixty days in, and everything switched.

His style was exactly the same. His hair had faded from blue to platinum, which… okay fine. But before the trip you won’t believe what he did. It may just have been the most masculine attractive thing I’ve ever experienced in all my years of dating. He texted me a Google Doc titled “Sleepless in Seattle Trip.” I clicked the link and there were all these options. Hotel options. Flight options. Restaurants (and GF options). Activities to do. His text said “all I need you to do is check this and that for what you want and I’ll take care of the rest”. I sat there reading a Google Doc and felt more pursued than I had in years. It was intentional and mature, and it felt, I’ll just say it, really really really safe and masculine. And somewhere on that trip, with the blue hair gone platinum and the baggy pants still very much in rotation, I looked at him and realized I was so attracted to him. The whole of him, the parts I’d been grading and the parts I’d been trying to ignore.

I had no idea she wasn't physically into me yet. Or I didn't care, which from where I sat looked the same. I had decided I was going to pursue her until she made it clear she wasn't interested, and nothing was clear yet. So I built the doc. Hotels, flights, restaurants, gluten-free options, every day with a few choices on it. Not to impress her. I wanted her to land in Seattle and feel taken care of, and I wanted us to make a few memories we'd still have at eighty. The doc still exists.

I’ve watched the same thing happen with client after client since. Sara came through School of Dating never having been in a relationship, gave a real chance to a guy who wasn’t her type physically (he had long Jesus-like hair that went all the way down his back), got attracted to the way he loved God and treated people, and watched the physical attraction grow right day by day. She’s MARRIED now.

So let’s talk about the freedom in all of this. Nobody is asking you to settle for less attraction. We do not want you to get to your wedding day and picture your wedding night completely grossed out. You should not FORCE yourself to want to kiss the person you are going to marry!

However, what this is is permission to stop needing physical attraction fireworks on day one. Build the other four attraction buckets and watch the fifth one grow. The world taught us to measure the one part of attraction that fades fastest and ignore the four that last way longer.

One Yes Away

So let’s put it all together, because this chapter has been asking you to do something that sounds small and isn’t. Stop dating your type. Date character.

Amanda said one yes to a guy with none of her usual spark, and she’s engaged. Sara said one yes to a guy with hair down his back, and she’s married. I said one yes to a blue-haired skater kid from another state who ate a Double-Double like it had wronged him, and I married him. None of us were chasing a feeling. All three of us were one open yes away from our person, and we almost didn’t say it.

So, the assignment, and it fits on an index card. Tonight, open to Galatians 5 and pick your five. Five words about who a person is. Under them, write your three F’s, with one honest sentence each about where you actually stand on faith, family, and money. Then put the card somewhere you’ll see it, because the next time someone asks you out, or you catch yourself a little curious about someone who is nowhere near your type, that card is the only list that gets a vote.

And then give them sixty minutes. You’re not marrying them. You’re having a conversation.

Somewhere out there is a person with every one of your five and none of your type, and the only thing standing between you is the no you’ve been saying on autopilot. Make it a yes.

Dear My Type

Type Tips: How Your Type Writes Your List

Lone Wolf: You’d rather not have a list at all, because a list means admitting you want this. Your shift? Write the five down. Putting them on paper is the first honest thing you’ve said about wanting a person.

Hopeless Romantic: Your list is a feeling: spark, butterflies, the whole movie. Your shift? Chemistry doesn’t make the list, character does. Grade the four that last before you let the fifth run the show.

Overthinker: Your list is forty items and growing, and it exists mostly to protect you from being wrong. Your shift? Five. Pick five pieces of character and hold everything else loosely. The thin list is the protection.

Safety Seeker: You say “safe” and mean “comfortable,” so you fold on the real non-negotiables the second someone feels easy. Your shift? Decide your five and your three F’s before you meet anyone, and let them hold when your nerves want to fold.

Wanderer: You’ve never written a list because committing to criteria feels like committing, so you follow the spark wherever it drifts. Your shift? Five character words on an index card. They won’t trap you. They’ll finally point you somewhere.

Intentional Romantic: You have a list, a very good one, and it’s a spreadsheet, and the spreadsheet has never once produced a surprise. Your shift? The person who grows you probably won’t fit the plan. Give one “not my type” sixty minutes this month.