How much should I trust my rigid taste in looks: height, type, not attractive to me?

Ideas of beauty are learned from one's surroundings. For centuries fullness was a sign of prosperity and considered beautiful; today slimness is prized; pale skin was a mark of nobility and a tan of commoners, today the reverse. He suggests imagining a young man raised in China who is offered, in an American yeshiva, a tall girl with light hair and large eyes: he would simply be bewildered. What seems innate is in fact learned, and that is precisely the good news: what we desire can gradually be retuned.

“What a person is attracted to may seem inborn to him, but it's not. It's learned.”

He tells how Mirel asked her father to check personally that the young man had no peyos hidden behind his ears: with peyos she would definitely not go out. The father looked from behind; there were none. Six weeks later, an engagement; two months after that, the wedding. Half a year on, the son-in-law appeared with peyos tucked behind his ears: he had had them since the age of three, but on the eve of the meeting the family barber was busy, a stranger cut off one peyah, and he asked to have the other cut too so as not to come before her father lopsided. Mirel herself admitted that what had seemed most important before the wedding turned out to matter not at all afterwards.

“Something that mattered so much to me before we were married mattered so little afterward.”

Beauty really is in the eye of the beholder: two people look at the same thing and see something different. More than that, most people do not know what they are looking for until they find it. Hence her practical conclusion: someone else's assessment of a candidate's looks should not decide for you whether to go on the date.

“Most people don't know what they are looking for until they find it.”

You can set yourself any rules, but it is worth remembering the general rules of the game too: girls usually want young men taller than themselves, and men over thirty often feel more comfortable with women a few years younger. Dating, like everything in life, has unwritten rules, and the main thing here is honesty with yourself about what you are offering, and no resentment toward those who are looking for something else. She compares it to basketball: if you cannot play at their level, you will not be playing with them, and there is nothing shameful in that.

“a person has to be honest with himself about what he is offering”