Why Do I Have a Type? What Your Pattern Means
Entry No. 166 ·
By The IF Team
Do people have a type? Most do, and it is more than a figure of speech. When psychologists compared the personalities of people’s exes with those of their current partners, using each partner’s own description of themselves, they found a real resemblance between past and present partners, and it held even after allowing for people choosing someone like themselves. A type grows out of what feels familiar, where you spend your time, what earlier relationships taught you and what you genuinely value. It can lead you straight to someone who suits you, or round the same loop to the same ending. The useful question is not whether you have one. It is which kind yours is.
If your friends can spot your type across a room before you have even looked up, you are in good company, and there is nothing shallow about it. A pattern in who you fall for is information. Sometimes it is telling you what you love; sometimes it is telling you what you are used to. And sometimes the person who fits it best is already with someone, or you are. IF lets you be honest about a feeling like that, whatever your relationship status and whoever it is for: you take something that grew in real life, put it into words, and act on it when the time is right. Nothing can open until you are both single, so it asks nothing of anyone today.
Types are one thread in a bigger story about why we like who we like, which the psychology of attraction follows from first glance to falling in love.
The research says types are real
The clearest evidence comes from Yoobin Park and Geoff MacDonald at the University of Toronto. They took 332 people from a long-running German study of relationships and compared how each person’s exes and current partners described themselves, on statements such as “I am extroverted”. The partners resembled one another more than chance would explain. And it was not only that each partner resembled the person choosing them: the partners resembled each other.
The researchers drew a practical point from it. People often blame a breakup on an ex’s personality and swear off that kind of person, then find themselves with someone very similar anyway. Park suggested this can work in your favour, because what you learned about getting along with one personality can carry over to the next. The habits that did not help can carry over too.
One detail is worth knowing if you are hoping to change your pattern. The resemblance was weaker among people who were especially outgoing or open to new experiences, although that result did not hold up in every analysis. A plausible reading is a simple one: the wider the range of people you meet, the less often you meet the same one.
That study looked at personality, not looks. When most people say “my type”, they mean a face, a height or a style as much as a temperament, and those patterns are obvious enough to any friend who has watched you date. Think of the friend who has fallen for three tall, brooding musicians in a row and swears each time that this one is different. Looks are the part of a type you notice first. Personality is the part that decides what a relationship feels like on an ordinary Tuesday.
Where your type comes from
Familiarity
People tend to warm to what they have met before, an effect psychologists call mere exposure. A laugh, a way of arguing or a particular kind of calm that reminds you of someone you once loved can register as chemistry before you have decided anything at all.
The places you have been
Your type is partly a map of your life. If you have spent years in theatre groups, at climbing walls or in one corner of the internet, you have met a great many of one kind of person, and fallen for some of them. That is less destiny than geography.
Who you are
Partners resemble each other in values, background and outlook far more often than they differ, which is why the old line about opposites attracting holds up less well than its fame suggests. Part of any type is simply your own reflection.
What your relationships taught you
Each relationship teaches you how to be with a certain kind of person: their rhythms and moods, how to make them laugh, how to make up after a row. The next person who works the same way can feel easy from the first evening, and ease is easy to mistake for fate.
What you were told to want
Films, friends and the faces you scroll past every day all shape what reads to you as attractive. Some of what you think of as your type is borrowed. That is no reason to drop it, and every reason to check that it is yours.
Your type on paper is not your type in person
Here is the catch: people are better at describing their type than at predicting who they will fall for. A large review of the research found that the qualities people say they want shape how they rate partners on paper but did not reliably predict who they were drawn to after meeting in person.
That is why so many couples have a story that begins with one of them saying “honestly, you were not my type”. A type is a sketch drawn from the people you have known. The person in front of you is under no obligation to match it.
When your type is working for you
A type is usually serving you well when:
- It is built on qualities rather than measurements: kind, curious, quick to laugh, not a height and a hair colour.
- Your relationships with this kind of person were good, even the ones that ended for reasons that had nothing to do with who they were.
- You can say why the pattern matters to you, and the answer is about how you feel with them.
- It is wide enough that you still notice people outside it.
A type like that is not a rut. It is self-knowledge, and it saves you a great deal of time.
When your type is keeping you stuck
A type becomes a problem when it is really a pattern of endings. The usual signs:
- Your relationships end the same way, at the same stage or over the same argument.
- The shared quality is one that hurts: people who keep you guessing, who are never quite available, or who hold part of themselves back however close you get.
- You write off kind, interested people as boring before giving them a second conversation.
- The people who fit best are nearly always already taken.
- Your type is so narrow that hardly anyone qualifies.
None of this means something is wrong with you. The pull is often towards the familiar, and familiar is not the same as good for you. If you recognise a run of anxious, push-and-pull relationships, reading about attachment styles can help you put words to it.
How to widen your type without throwing it away
- Write down the last three people you fell for. List what they had in common, then, separately, what the endings had in common.
- Keep what belongs to the good parts. Question what belongs to the endings.
- Translate looks into feelings. Instead of tall and dark-haired, try someone who makes you feel looked after, or someone who makes you laugh at yourself.
- Give “not my type” a second conversation. Attraction often builds as you get to know someone, so a first impression is a weak reason to rule anyone out.
- Notice who is already kind to you and interested in you. Steady, returned interest is worth more than any pattern.
You are not trying to erase your type. You are making sure it works for you, rather than the other way round.
When your type is someone who is taken
Sometimes the problem is not your pattern at all. You have met someone who fits it completely — a colleague, someone in your friendship group, a person you see every week at the same class — and they are in a relationship, or you are.
It is a common place for a crush to land, because you have had time to know them, and knowing someone is how attraction tends to grow. It is also nothing to be ashamed of. Wanting someone betrays nobody. Cheating would, and so would lying about it, but a feeling you have simply noticed is neither.
You could tell them. Said out loud while one of you has a partner, though, it lands on them all at once: they have to answer, the friendship or the office shifts around it, and the words stay said. Or you can say it in a way that waits.
Where IF fits: your type, at the right time
We built IF for people at every stage of their love lives, single or attached, on a simple belief: you should be able to tell someone how you feel, honestly, even when the timing is wrong. When you and the person who fits your type are both single, and they are on IF, a Like is all it takes. If they accept it, a chat opens.
When one of you has a partner, or they have not joined yet, what you send is an IF: up to 250 characters, sealed. Swipe might bring them to you; if not, Search finds them from details they have given you themselves, such as an email address, a phone number or an Instagram handle. They may hear that an IF is waiting for them. They will not hear who wrote it or what it says unless it is revealed, and while either of you is with someone it stays closed: no chat, no back-and-forth. Someone not yet on IF gets a single short invitation if you used their email; a number or a handle reaches nobody, and your IF sits quietly until they arrive. The first one you send costs nothing.
Paid plans let you put your preferences in order and sort them into Needs and Wants. Someone who misses a Need drops a long way down your deck without disappearing from it, which is a fair way to treat a type that should be a leaning, not a law. Membership has the details.
Your type tells you something true about what you love. IF lets you act on it honestly without asking anyone to do anything today, so that if your timing and theirs ever meet, the person who fits already knows how you feel.
Questions people ask
Is it bad to have a type?
No. Most people have one, and it often reflects real values. It only becomes a problem when it keeps leading to the same unhappy ending, or when it is so narrow that it rules out people who would suit you.
Can your type change over time?
Yes. Types shift as you meet different people and learn what you actually enjoy in a relationship. One person who surprises you can redraw the whole sketch.
Why do I keep attracting the same type of person?
Partly because you keep moving in the same circles, and partly because what you respond to shapes who sticks around. The people who match your pattern get your attention and your warmth, so they are the ones who stay. Change where you meet people, and who earns a second conversation, and you change who you attract.
What does it mean when someone says you are not their type?
Usually less than it sounds. It describes their past, not your worth, and plenty of couples began with exactly that sentence. If it was said as a gentle no, though, take it as a no.
Your type has brought you this far, but it does not get the final word. When the person who fits it is on the wrong side of a relationship, put what you feel into an IF and give the timing a chance to catch up.