Date a man who reads. The one who actually sits with books. Who underlines passages. Who closes a novel and sits there for ten minutes just feeling it.

He’ll have empathy that didn’t come from experience alone but from living a thousand lives through other people’s words. He’s been in the mind of a nineteenth-century woman, a refugee, a soldier, a mother burying her child. He knows the world is bigger than his own perspective.

He’ll listen differently. Readers know how to hold silence while someone finishes their thought. They don’t interrupt the narrative arc of what you’re trying to say.

He’ll understand that people are complex. That you can be contradictory and still make sense. That character development happens slowly. He won’t expect you to be a finished story. He knows the best ones unfold across chapters.

He’ll have vocabulary for his feelings beyond “fine” or “stressed.” He’s read enough to know there are words for the specific shade of loneliness you feel in a crowded room, for the ache of wanting something you can’t name.

Date a man who reads and you’ll never be bored. He’s always thinking. Always curious. Always ready to explore the terrain between what’s said and what’s meant.

And when he tells you his story, it’ll have texture. Depth. Nuance. Because he’s learned from the best storytellers how to make meaning out of the mess of being human.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​