How to Lower Your Standards

On escaping Prince Charming Syndrome

Welcome to The Ick, Season 4: DISGUST. This season I’ve invited a brilliant cast of writers and friends to explore what makes us recoil and why.

Season 4 will culminate in a print magazine and live reading in San Francisco. Subscribe here so you don’t miss event info and updates. Every paid subscription helps us cover printing costs.

It’s been a crazy few weeks in dating discourse: an app for shittalking men, Tea, hit #1 in the app store (then got hacked by 4chan), and a viral NYT essay, “The Trouble with Wanting Men,” coined the new term “heterofatalism”. Substacker Magdalene J. Taylor, of Many Such Cases, wrote “gender discourse has made dating a hostile act,” with women approaching dating with such defensiveness and hostility that the goal is “not to form a connection or even have fun, but to avoid the possibility of embarrassment.”

In today’s essay, writer Spenser Trost reflects on her own experiences in a dating pool muddied by gender discourse and unfair expectations. After staying single well into her 20s, and watching all her peers pair off, she asked herself: what if the problem is me?

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When I was in college, I took a women’s history class, and on the first day, Fate seated me next to a very charming, very cute boy.

At first, we made coy glances at each other and smiled to ourselves. I peeped at his notes, and cooed inwardly at his page organization. Eventually, we began talking. First about coursework, then about movies and hobbies. We bonded over favorite books and what campus coffee shop had the best playlist.

I found myself making a mental checklist of all the boxes he was ticking. Needless to say, an intense crush was forming.

Until one tragic day he walked into class wearing a fedora. I felt an inward embarrassment I didn’t have the words for (the term “ick” hadn’t quite hit the streets yet). He beamed at me. I cringed. How could I fall for someone who wears a fedora? Wearing a fedora meant there was an 80 percent chance he listened to Jason Mraz. An even worse offense.

I eventually changed seats altogether, never to speak to him again.

In the following years, my ick reflex got worse. So bad, in fact, I stayed single for the next five years. At a certain point I had to ask myself, is the ick holding me back?

When standards become barriers

At age 25, I’d never had a boyfriend. It seemed like every guy I met carried a glaring red flag. Simple things like bad grammar or laughing too much at a movie disgusted me.

With no prospects in sight, I started to convince myself that I was okay with never finding my person. Each year I was single my standards grew harder and harder to satisfy.

I wanted a man who dressed well, but not too well. There had to be an effortlessness to his style. He had to be fit, but not from going to the gym all the time. His physique needed to come from his active lifestyle. He had to make a six figure salary, and have flexibility with his job. But he also needed to do something important and admirable. He couldn’t be more than five years older than me, otherwise he’d want to move too quickly. He needed to love traveling.

My perfect guy was a 6’4”, 28-year-old pediatric neurosurgeon, with his own practice who did two life-saving operations a month and spent his free time surfing, spearfishing, and sailing, preferably at his second house in Costa Rica.

Clearly, I was in my own way.

So, over the next five years, I made an honest attempt to get over these superficial hangups. Now at 30, two and a half boyfriends later, I think I’ve figured it out: I needed to lower my standards.

Prince charming syndrome

I’ve noticed a sort of phenomenon in the early stages of dating, where I compare the person I’m seeing to an absurdly high ideal.

I call this the Prince Charming Standard. Take the 6-6-6 rule for example: it’s the mandate that men be six feet tall, have six pack abs (sometimes interchanged with six-inch penis size), and earn over six figures.

The issue with all these “standards” is that none of them reflect true character.

The 6-6-6 rule has strict superficial standards that are built on important pillars, but dismiss any sort of real character review. The requirements are merely facets of appearance, lifestyle, and ambition (or stability)—which are important, but can be deceptive.

Let’s consider salary. While important, salaries can falsify the entire picture. Some people get six-figure jobs out of college and stay there, unhappy and unchallenged. Many work their way there, earning even healthier salaries later in life. However, many people get laid off. A lot of people are extremely bad with their money! And some will leave their cushy job for a more fulfilling, lower-paying job.

In this fragile inflated economy, I understand the importance. But in this fragile inflated economy, what women should want to know is: how’s their drive? work ethic? ability to figure out tough circumstances?

I realized these character qualities are what really matter, but this rewiring took some time. Here’s how I started to rethink what I was really looking for...

How I lowered my standards

In the beginning, the salary question was imperative for me. But I started to notice that stats-based dating wasn’t yielding any good returns. These questions never revealed anything about my date’s character.

So instead of fishing for income clues, I steered the conversation in other directions: how did he get into his field? did he find his work fulfilling? These questions revealed far more about his values and character than a number ever did.

Then, I started observing the happy and healthy relationships of my peers.

When I looked at my friends’ partners, and back-checked them against my personal ick list, I’d find they’d often exhibited some trait I found unappealing. And yet, these were men I liked and respected. And my perfect angel best friend was beyond happy. If ankle socks or a strong interest in a niche video game was good enough for my perfect angel best friend, why not me too?

Next, was appearance. After a few observational revelations, I stopped the superficial screening process and started to prioritize personality regardless of looks. One of my icks that I stand by is bad sense of humor. I focused on people who understood my sense of humor, no matter their fitness, salary, or height.

It turns out a fitness instructor who dresses like a country club regular can actually be funny and sweet. I went on many dates with a guy who was a couple inches shorter than me, purely because I liked his spirit. He helped me rediscover my sense of adventure and humor.

While none of those relationships lasted, I learned a bit more about my dating preferences—and got help moving a couch into my apartment.

Recently, I started dating a guy who would text me “your cute” and “that was to much fun”. This used to be a big hang up for me. But I decided to look past the grammar because the message was clear and charming. He ended up being one of the most emotionally intelligent men I’d ever dated. He made me feel really good about myself, so much that I never stopped dating him. Cheers to six months!

People change, okay

What I was missing during my years of unsuccessful dating was the acceptance of the humanness of it all.

The fun in dating is meeting people, flaws and all. The more I opened up to people, the more I realized how frivolous some of my standards were.

I think about how much I’ve changed in one short year. Five years ago, I was an entirely different person. I’ve changed nearly every outward part of myself—style, hair, hobbies, salary, social life, education—and thank god. Ya girl is growing.

All this is to stay, the person you end up marrying or settling down with will inevitably be a different person than the one you started dating. So why are we putting so much emphasis on what they’re wearing or how much money they earn? If you’re lucky, the person you end up with will grow and evolve a lot in their lifetime. It’s the beauty and excitement of a good relationship.

Ultimately, our compatibility with someone isn’t rooted in superficial variables, it’s in shared values. Things like humor, openness, and principles should feel like solid commonalities while things like appearance, height, or career are at most a cherry on top. Finding your compatibility in the core of a person means more chances of depth and success along the way, even as you both change.

I often think back to my fedora-wearing college crush. What would have become of our classroom romance had I not disqualified him for a mere sartorial infraction? In hindsight, he may have been my perfect college boyfriend. He was kind, smart, handsome, and he listened to what I had to say. The character markings were all there.

Maybe, just maybe, Prince Charming does wear a fedora.

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Spenser Trost is a hedonist living in San Francisco. You can find her working when she’s not surfing, hiking, hanging with friends, cooking, laughing or breathing.