I'm not sure that "some" communicates what I want it to, because it's just an indeterminate number. For example, some people shower daily. Some people have walked on the moon. There's no indication of frequency or proportion. Is there no room to discuss major trends in human behavior?

Yeah, I agree that there are degrees of shallowness like you said, but I was asking to find out what is the bare minimum for someone to be considered shallow at all in your view?

Wait, so what's your definition of shallow then? Is it being attracted to any physical characteristic or having any fetish?



That all depends on how rare your preferred partner is. It's preventing him from finding anyone in Sweden, but it might not in California. If his fetish were BDSM instead, he wouldn't have a problem anywhere. That's why he has to make a change if he doesn't want to end up forever alone. He has to sacrifice one of the two, either his fetish or his home. Either one will feel like a big loss, so it's up to him which he values more. If he has to suppress his fetish, it's never going away. He'll have to learn coping strategies and make peace with feeling unfulfilled in life. Also I wouldn't frame it like feedees are eager to gain weight for their partner's sexual gratification, they do it for their own sexual gratification, and they have shared goals with their feeder. Maybe that's just nitpicking semantics though, idk.

The point I was trying to make is that in general, it seems like men have a narrower list of qualities that they find sexy in a partner, while women generally have a wider range of things they find sexually attractive beyond purely physical. It's not about who you would date, but what turns you on. Your example of a woman who only likes 6' tall men is an exact comparison, but that's because the woman's list of turn-ons is also very narrow, which I think isn't very common for women. What I was trying to do was think of some common answers I've heard for what women find attractive beyond just looks (sense of humor, etc.), and come up with a scenario where ALL of those qualities disappear at once. Perhaps I made a bad analogy, but I'm struggling to think of a different one that still illustrates that point.

My personal definition of shallowness has nothing to do with what someone's attracted to, no matter how specific. I think shallowness comes in when someone values sexuality above anything else in a relationship. So to make another strained analogy, you could have a guy who's only sexually attracted to 4' tall rodeo clowns, which is super specific and rare, but if he cared the most about personality and family values in his rodeo clown (and is even willing to bend some on the sexual side so he can find someone), he wouldn't be shallow in my opinion. However, you could have a different guy who is attracted to women of all heights, sizes, races and ages, but he doesn't care about anything else, he just wants a hot girlfriend and nothing else matters to him, that guy would be shallow.



Yeah that's true, but I think that problem goes way beyond fetish sites, it's just more pronounced here because we're looking for unicorns. But people have been accusing Disney of giving kids unrealistic expectations on relationships for decades. That, and friends often support each other by saying things like "Don't worry, you'll find that dream guy someday." I think a lot of people just aren't happy with "good enough" anymore.

Of course, it's the same way for men too. Attraction alone can't be a base for a relationship, because personality and life goals matter much more when you're eventually going to live together.



True, love is also a big factor. I didn't think to mention that, but the reason why is that in cases like OP where he has such a narrowly defined range of attraction, it's much easier to lose EVERYTHING that he finds attractive outside of love, which might not be enough to make up for it. To be clear, I don't think his situation is very common.



I completely agree, and I said the same thing in my own words in an earlier post, where I was outlining his options. I said several times that sexuality is important to people in relationships, so most women will not be interested in that kind of arrangement.



My understanding was that seeing people as a monolith meant that you viewed them all the same way, or the exceptions are so rare that they're negligible. I don't see it that way. A majority might be only 50.1%. Even something like 20% might be the main trend if everything else is smaller. Let's say we were able to run a survey and poll every single woman in the western world about what they find attractive. Do you think you'd get a billion answers that were all completely different, like only one woman in the world likes tall men? Or would there be some overlap between answers? If we tallied up the common answers, we could turn that data into a pie chart. Do you think the slices would be completely equal in size, like the same exact number of women like tall men as ones who prefer short men? Or would the slices all be different sizes?

When we talk in generalities, we're really just guessing about which pie slice is the largest. This is something most people do to some degree in different ways. It's a way to try to understand the world and how to move within it. Yes, this can veer into being toxic with some people who take it too far, but that's not always the case. Streaming networks use generalizations to predict which shows will be popular. As you're growing up, you pay attention to how people react to you and adjust. "People don't like it when I do X, so I should avoid doing X from now on", even though that generalization isn't absolute, and there are many people who do like it. Pattern recognition is extremely common, but most people don't even realize when they're doing it.

I wouldn't either. I personally don't think someone is shallow if they lose attraction to their partner. Munchies said that.



I don't treat groups like a monolith. I understand that a group like women is hugely varied in every regard. That's why I'm always careful to use words like "many", "tend to", etc. I personally think it's ok to notice patterns of behavior in groups of people, just as long as you understand that there will always be a lot of exceptions. It also doesn't address the cause, because social conditioning could play a part. Societal gender roles are one example of a pattern of behavior that is different between men and women, but those roles are expressed differently between individuals, and some reject it completely. Those people are the exceptions, they are in the minority, so they get left out of such discussions, mostly for the sake of brevity. Including such disclaimers every time can really bog down a conversation. I just assume that most people are mentally mature enough to understand this basic fact about human nature.



What I was originally saying was that men and women, on average, have different factors that they find sexually attractive in a partner (not valuable, just sexy). For men, a huge part of that is physical. For women, different factors are more attractive. Because of that, a direct 1 v 1 comparison is impossible, because if someone's partner lost the factors that men like, women would still be attracted to something else about them. What I was attempting to do is provide a functional equivalent, where her partner lost most of the factors that women are attracted to. Keep in mind the inverse is also true. In the depression scenario, if the genders were reversed, most men would also be frustrated and might not tolerate it either, but they would still find her sexy as long as her appearance didn't change too much.



In that case, I don't think OP is shallow at all. In his first post, he said he sometimes sees people he's physically attracted to, but doesn't like "their personality, morale or view on life". He said he does meet women who he's not attracted to, but "with whom I share at least some intellectual and psycological common ground, and where things are fun and drama free." The entire point of his thread was to ask about the logistics of dating someone you like as a person but don't find attractive. In the scenario you gave where she lost weight, I answered that "he would probably still be in love with her and care about her deeply, and would still value the marriage" but would essentially have erectile dysfunction when he's with her. Does this sound like someone who only cares about outward appearance to you?

The reason this discussion focuses so heavily on sexual attraction is because he's still in the stage where he's looking for a partner. At that point, attraction is like the base foundation that qualifies someone for possibly dating. If a guy is trying to meet women in the club, he'll scan the environment looking at people. His eye will be caught by someone sexy, and he'll approach. If a guy approaches a woman and is totally unappealing off rip, she will probably dismiss him quickly. If both find each other attractive, then a conversation can take place and you can build from there onto other things.

Shallowness is seen as a bad thing, it's considered a character flaw. Maybe you didn't mean it that way, but when someone points out another's flaws with such direct language, it's always going to be perceived as shaming. Especially in text, when tone of voice can't be heard.

In the case you gave, he would probably still be in love with her and care about her deeply, and would still value the marriage. However, most men's sexual attraction is based either on physical looks or sex acts if they involve a kink. If both of those are completely gone, he may not feel aroused at all. In that case, he may need to find work-arounds so he can still maintain a sex life, and basically just close his eyes and think of England.

Women seem to have a more multi-factored list of things that they find attractive in a partner, so if he lacks in one area, there's still other areas to fall back on. Here's an equivalent for women: Let's say he gets married like you said. Then one day, he gets fired and refuses to look for any work, he just wants her to be the sole breadwinner, so that he can spend all his time playing video games and smoking weed. He doesn't want to take over the housework either. Anything that distracts from his gaming is met with frustration. That includes showering, so he starts neglecting his hygiene. On top of that, he gets fat when she likes fit guys, and he grows a weird beard. These are all symptoms of severe depression, but he stubbornly refuses to get help or talk to her about it. Do you think she would still find him sexy?

Ok, so there are only 3 viable options that I see for you.

1. Leave feedism in the realm of fantasy only. If you stopped looking for feedees, I'm sure that you can find a normal BBW. I guarantee you, there are fat women in Sweden somewhere. If she eventually loses weight and slims down, you could always get viagra. If you find yourself in a sexless marriage, that's pretty much a guarantee for unhappiness for both you.

2. Leave Sweden. Move the US, we probably have more feedees per capita than anywhere else in the world. It won't be easy. You'll have to save as much money as you can, it might even take you over a year to save for a one-way ticket and a month's living expenses. Arrange to get a job before you leave. Then, part ways with your friends and family and start fresh.

3. Don't date. Learn to accept living alone. You can still have friends of course, even with women. But you will slowly grow old, never getting to experience a romantic connection or have a family. Year by year, you will become more depressed, more bitter, more filled with regret. That's how the rest of your life will go if you stay stuck in one place.

I don't mean to sound harsh, but sometimes there are no good options. You just have to choose the lesser of 2 evils.

@Munchies,
By your definition, 99% of men are probably shallow. We're just wired differently. Maybe that's a bad thing, but it's outside of our control. Shaming someone for not being able to get an erection, for whatever reason, is not helpful.

Honestly, I still think this is your best option. It may be worth examining why it didn't work for you and what you can do differently, rather than giving up. Here's what you can do if you're really serious about finding someone and willing to put in the work: First, ignore the social media side of it completely, and just use it as a search engine for profiles. In your search filters, only use two: female and "near me". Dozens of profiles will come up, arranged by distance. You can bookmark the search results if you're using a browser, since you'll be coming back to it.

Next, you need to open every profile on the list one by one, and read each one carefully, including each tab. Also, look down at her post history and read some of those. If you see something that disqualifies her, like being in a relationship, or not looking for men, or only looking for chatting, or she sounds annoying in her posts, then you move on to the next. Reason why you don't put these in your search filters is because some people leave it blank, and you'd be filtering them out too. If you see someone you'd consider going out with, follow her or put her name down in a list or something. Keep going until you've done this for every single profile from the results.

Then, go down your list and message each one you saved one by one. Don't copy and paste the same thing, or only say "hi" in your first message. If what she wrote in her profile explicitly focuses on kink, you can comment on that, otherwise it's better to comment on something else you have in common, and just have a normal conversation (maybe with some subtle flirting). At some point, you can pivot to asking her what she's looking for on the site and go from there. Do this with only a few profiles at a time, since trying to juggle a bunch of conversations at once is a bad idea.

This is a lot of work, and will probably take several weeks to complete. If you've gone through everybody and still had no luck making a connection, only then can you say that you've tried everything and failed. Personally, I haven't needed to be this thorough, but that's because I live near a major city with fat American women, lol.

Regarding the homosexual comparison, I think he was making a partial analogy. He's comparing one aspect to it, but not others. Actually, this is probably the case for most analogies. If I compared being gay to being lesbian, there are ways that's an apt comparison, but also a lot of differences in the experience because of gender. In fact, if you want an exact 1:1 comparison for anything, it would be impossible because everything is only ever exactly like itself (if that makes sense). Like, a sweater vest is sort of like a vest, and sort of like a sweater, but it's not exactly like either one. On the other hand, people here might consider it an inappropriate comparison on moral grounds, as in it's not incorrect but it's distasteful, but that's a different conversation to the one people are having.

I think that for most men, physical attraction to some degree is a prerequisite for developing a romantic connection in the first place. You may enjoy the company of a thin woman with a great personality, but you might not ever feel that romantic spark. You do have some options, just not great ones.

Sexuality is a huge component of relationships for everybody, including women. If you don't want to go there, most women won't be interested, with the exception of asexuals. However, asexual women are even rarer than fat women. If you do find someone like that though, you will probably still be looking for a sexual outlet, while she may want monogamy.

In theory, polyamorous women are an option since she can get her sexual needs met by someone else. However, just like monogamous women, sexuality is still an important part of what they desire from their relationships, so poly women probably still won't be interested.

If you're looking for a friend with benefits but the only benefit is cuddling, I think that's something you might be able to find as long as you are clear about what you want from the beginning. However, I think that most women who are actively looking for a long-term monogamous relationship probably won't be interested since time spent with you is time not spent dating someone serious. Plus, women who are oriented towards committed relationships know that their partner would probably look at their friendship with you as a form of cheating.

Earlier, you compared your preference for fat women to a sexual orientation like being gay, and said you are as attracted to thin women as you are to men as a straight guy. If that's the case, what do you think about pursuing this type of relationship with a man? Bromances are a thing, apparently. You might have an easier time finding a gay guy who will respect your boundaries, especially since it seems like most gay guys prefer open relationships. I imagine it would be just like a platonic friendship, but with more physical contact.

OR, and hear me out, you could try dating women you're attracted to? It may not be easy to meet them in your daily life, but that's what online dating is for. If you haven't tried Feabie for this, I recommend it, since I've had some success there myself. You'll be able to meet people you'd never bump into in real life. If you can't find someone local who you like, you may need to think about looking farther afield. That may mean having a long-distance relationship until you can figure out the logistics of relocating.