Meeting a cute guy is a rare occasion. That’s why you have to take advantage of the opportunity when it’s presented to you. Of course, that can be hard because your mind will be racing with ridiculous thoughts. Here’s what you can expect when you meet a cute guy. Don’t lie — we’ve all been there!
What makes a guy “cute”?
When we think of physical and sexual attraction, “cuteness” isn’t necessarily the first quality we think of. Sexy, handsome, hot — those are more like it. However, cute guys can evoke strong feelings too. That’s because they’re charming, endearing, and really loveable. A cute guy is usually funny or goofy. He knows how to put a smile on your face and he’s really sweet. Not only that, but he tends to be shy or at least not cocky. It’s not that he has poor self-esteem. Rather, he has a humility about him that’s irresistible.
Thoughts you have when you meet one
- “Could any man really be that cute?” Maybe your period is making you too horny to think straight. To be sure, you’ll snap a stalker picture of him and send it to your best friend for confirmation. It’s been a long time since you’ve seen a man who looks like a walking Greek god, but here we are…
- “Can he tell I’m turned on?” Of course he can’t. The only plus side to being a woman is that you don’t get hard-ons whenever you think about being bent over a table. Thank God for that, because you’d be pretty embarrassed right now otherwise.
- “Thank goodness I look good.” Usually, you tend to run into a cute guy on the days that you forget to shower, shave, and do your hair. So if you actually look presentable, you’ll feel like everything is going right in life.
- “Should I go talk to him?” If you don’t, you might never see him again. But if you do, then he could have a horrible personality that’ll ruin your illusion of him. It’s hard to know what to do in this situation.
- “I bet he’s already taken.” It’s impossible to tell if he’s unattached by looking at him, but you’ll still look for little clues. If his outfit matches perfectly or if his watch is from Michael Kors, then you’ll assume a woman picked it out for him.
- “If he doesn’t have a girlfriend, he’s probably gay.” Everyone always says that the best guys are either gay or taken. That phrase must’ve been created for a reason, so if he’s actually single, he’s probably looking for another dude to date.
- “Is it love at first sight?” It’s a stretch, but what if he’s the man that you’re meant to spend the rest of your life with? This could be the moment when your entire life changes.
- “There must be something wrong with him.” If he’s not gay or taken, then he must be a misogynist, a narcissist, or terrified of commitment. Otherwise, women would be flocking to him, wouldn’t they? It’s not very often you see a cute single guy like this walking around.
- “He looks just like [insert celebrity crush here].” He probably doesn’t, but you’ll still compare him to any hot celebrity you can. That way, you won’t feel all that creepy for fangirling over him.
- “What if I kissed him right now?” It’s not like you’d actually go through with the idea, but it would be nice to skip the small talk and go straight for the good stuff. Hey, a girl’s got to daydream.
- “He seems like he would be the best boyfriend ever.” Of course, there’s no way you can actually tell this just by looking at him, but that doesn’t stop you from daydreaming about him surprising you with flowers at work, bringing you breakfast in bed, and introducing you to his parents about the girl he plans on marrying one day.
- “I bet he spends a lot of time at the gym.” He looks like he’s in shape, and while you can’t actually see his washboard abs, you can make out the shape of his muscles under his t-shirt enough to fantasize about this cute guy lifting heavy at the gym. Hell, maybe he’d even be strong enough to pick you up and hold you against the wall while he… oh, sorry.
- “I would totally shave my legs in winter for him.” There aren’t a lot of guys who hold the power to make you shave head to toe in the colder months, but this guy is so cute, you’d spend hours making sure every surface of your body was as smooth as a baby’s if it meant getting close to him. That’s how strong your feelings of lust are.
- “Maybe I should go back on birth control.” You’re not in a relationship and haven’t been for a while, and you definitely haven’t even talked to this guy yet, but you’ve already jumped so far ahead in your brain that you’re thinking it’s better to be safe than sorry and you should start taking the pill again. Whoa there, slow down.
- “Oh my God, I’m going to die alone.” It seems weird that you would swing so wildly from fantasizing about your perfect future with a cute guy to feeling like you’re going to be alone forever, but it happens. If you’re not in a position to go up and talk to him or you already know he’s in a relationship/it’s never going to happen, it can be depressing as hell. Thankfully, there are plenty of other handsome men where he came from. You just have to be patient.
Why can a cute guy have such a hold on you?
At its core, lust is a powerful feeling that can override your common sense. It can blind you to the truth of situations and make you act uncharacteristically. How can attraction be so strong?
- Physical attraction sets in pretty quickly. If you feel like you’ve experienced love at first sight when an attractive man comes along, you’re not imagining it. Well, not really. “People often make up their mind about someone within the first three minutes [of encountering them],” Helen Fisher, Ph.D., a biological anthropologist, senior research fellow with The Kinsey Institute, and author of Anatomy of Love: A Natural History of Mating, Marriage, and Why We Stray, tells mindbodygreen.
- It’s possible to be too attracted to a cute guy. While scientists are unsure what makes us sexually attracted to another person, we do know that the feeling of attraction can be a little too strong for our own good. “You can meet someone who unleashes the most elaborate sexual desire, but that person is probably not someone you should pursue, because the intensity of your sexual feelings likely comes from a [basic] — and dysfunctional — set of feelings and beliefs,” says Seth Meyers, Psy.D.
- That cute guy might just remind you of someone. A lot of the reason we’re drawn to specific people is that subconsciously, they remind us of someone we care/cared about like friends, parents, or even exes. “Subconsciously, hormones are activated because the other person has triggered some kind of similarity or resemblance,” says Beverly B. Palmer, Ph.D. You might think you’re just into him because he’s attractive, but chances are it goes deeper than that. Of course, you might not realize that unless you actually talk to him.
- Lust can turn into love, but it’s not likely. You might convince yourself that you’re head over heels for him because he’s attractive, but that doesn’t mean that attraction will translate into an actual relationship. “Lust is purely sexual attraction which is often accompanied by physical arousal. Lust occurs both within loving relationships and external,” says Haley Neidich, LCSW, a psychotherapist and relationship expert at Haley Neidich Consulting. “Lust is a natural human occurrence. Lust is not always something we act on, it is a sense of sexual interest.” She adds: “Sometimes lust can lead to love and is often experienced within a loving relationship. However, the presence of lust speaks to absolutely nothing about partners’ compatibility long-term.”
Why dating a cute guy isn’t all it’s cracked up to be
- Everyone thinks you’re punching above your weight. When I dated a cute guy, the first thing I noticed was how people started treating me differently. It was almost as if they were suspicious of me, as if the only explanation for my relationship was that I was dishonest or cheating the system. Eventually, I realized that they didn’t think I was attractive enough to be his girlfriend. When people think you’re dating out of your league, they treat you like you’ve done something immoral.
- People stare at him constantly. As a person of average physical attractiveness, I was not prepared for the amount of attention that hot people get. Everywhere we went, people looked at us. It was like he was a celebrity. When you see someone attractive, there’s an involuntary reaction to stare. You can’t help it. While I understood that this was a natural tendency, I started to feel like we were under a microscope, and it made me uncomfortable.
- You still have all the issues other couples have. This sounds obvious, but dating a hot person isn’t a guarantee that your relationship will be good. You still fight and have miscommunications and let each other down. You still see each other’s weaknesses and flaws. You still have to decide if you’re compatible. Nothing was different about our relationship except for how other people reacted to it.
- You stop seeing his beauty eventually. When you’ve been looking at the same person every day for months, you start to lose perspective. While I was constantly stunned by his beauty at the beginning of our relationship, I eventually stopped seeing it. When I looked at him, I’d just see…him. I was constantly reminded by other people of how gorgeous he was, but as far as I was concerned, his attractiveness was confined to his personality and the happy moments we shared, just as it is with every other partner I’ve had.
- People will hit on him. I could get over all the strangers staring at him and treating me like I was invisible, but the part that really got to me, in the end, was how often people flirted with him. Everywhere we went, women (and a few men) would be all over him. It was as if I didn’t exist. They seemed to think that because I wasn’t as physically attractive as him, he must be on the lookout for a better option.
More downsides of dating a cute guy
- You get imposter syndrome. All the overt flirting that people did in front of me made me feel like they might be right: I didn’t belong with him. He deserved a girlfriend who was exactly as attractive as him. I started feeling resentful even though I knew it wasn’t his fault and that I wasn’t forcing him to be with me. I felt like I wasn’t worthy of him, and over time, I began to push him away.
- You need constant affirmation. When you date someone so attractive that other people treat you like an imposter, you will need a lot of affirmation. You’ll need your partner to convince you that they actually want to be with you. I’m not an insecure person usually. But with him, I was exhausted by my feelings of inadequacy. I almost wished he’d break up with me. Why? To confirm my suspicions that he didn’t actually want to be with me. To his credit, he was patient and supportive, but everyone has a limit.
- It’s hard not to be jealous. You will inevitably compare yourself with the women who flirt with him. You’ll see how beautiful and accomplished they are and think, “Why isn’t he with her?!” You might even reach rock bottom with your self-esteem and feel certain that he’s cheating on you. I got embarrassingly suspicious of one of his colleagues, only to find out after we’d broken up that she was gay. Suffice it to say, I became the least attractive version of myself during our relationship. The irony is not lost on me.
- Even your friends will be weird around him. Your friends are only human. They are just as susceptible to beauty as the next person. They won’t be immune to the incredibly cute guy you introduce them to. It doesn’t matter if he’s your boyfriend or not. Luckily, they’ll lose objectivity at some point, too. My friends started acting normal around my partner a couple of months in.
Rediscovering your self-worth
After breaking up with him, I had a lot of mental and emotional baggage to sort through. We wouldn’t have lasted even if he hadn’t been drop-dead gorgeous. However, I still had issues to resolve. I had let my self-worth fall apart because of how strangers perceived me. In the months after our breakup, I had to remember where my value actually comes from:
- It comes from within. As cheesy as it sounds, self-worth comes from within. If you don’t recognize it in yourself, it doesn’t matter how much positive affirmation you get from those around you–you will never see it. Recognizing your value starts with knowing yourself, being comfortable with your imperfections, and acknowledging the things you still have to work on.
- It has nothing to do with looks. Seeing how people treated my boyfriend like royalty because of his beauty skewed my understanding of what worth actually was. I started thinking that it was all about appearance. I decided I wasn’t attractive enough to be liked. I tried to change myself to fit some societal definition of attractiveness, but it never felt authentic. If only I’d remembered that I loved my partner despite his beauty, not because of it. Maybe I would have applied that truth to myself.
- Other people should not dictate it. Your worth has nothing (I repeat: nothing) to do with how you look. It has nothing to do with who you’re dating or what your job is. It’s only human to compare yourself to others, but keep your self-judgment out of it. You are on your own path. Everyone else is on theirs. You cannot judge your worth based on other people. When you realize this, you will feel a weight lift from your shoulders.