1. YOU’LL GET A REAL RUSH FROM DATING A GUY WHO NEVER INTERRUPTS YOU
Or, if he does, he immediately notices and says sorry. Being able to passionately talk without being cut off is borderline orgasmic.
2. THE DREADED ~SILENT MOMENTS~ ARE ACTUALLY WONDERFUL
You’ll never come home exhausted from work and feel like you have to nonstop gab right away. You can both cuddle without the crushing pressure of filling every minuscule gap in a conversation. AKA, extremely underrated bliss.
3. HIM BEING QUIET DOES NOT MEAN HE’S MAD AT YOU
LOL, this one will drive you nuts because you know when *you* get quiet, it’s 100 percent intentional passive aggressiveness designed to make the other person slowly crumble. Not to the shy guy. He truly, genuinely is just floating in his own world for a hot second.
4. HE REALLY THRIVES OVER TEXT
The chatterbox floodgates really open when he has access to emojis and time to think before he speaks.
5. YOU HAVE TO REALLY ASK HIM ABOUT HIMSELF, OTHERWISE YOU MIGHT MISS SOME BIG STUFF
Shyness is p strongly correlated to modesty, and if you don’t ask him for details on how his big pitch at work went, he’ll probably skirt right over it. The bigger the accomplishment, the more your convo feels like 20 questions.
6. AND YOU’RE CONSTANTLY LEARNING CRAZY HUGE CHUNKS OF INFORMATION ABOUT HIM
Just when you think you know him, he’ll tell you he met Obama once and they talked for 10 whole minutes. NBD!
7. HE’LL ALSO ASK YOU THINGS NO ONE ELSE EVER THOUGHT TO
This guy has logged a lot of hours intently listening to you, so don’t be too shocked when he throws you a philosophical curveball like “If you never reach [x long-term goal], do you think you could ever be truly happy?”
8. SOMETIMES HE LISTENS TOO WELL
Basically, if you lied about liking a band to impress him in the beginning stages of your courtship, it will come out eventually when you say you hate their stuff.
9. IT’LL TAKE HIM A WHILE TO WARM UP TO YOUR FRIENDS
Because he’s not the type to interject a lot (or, at all), bigger group settings make him seem like all he’s secretly roasting everyone in his head between every silent, polite nod. So yeah, one-on-one friend hangs are way more his wheelhouse.
10. YOU’LL LOVE HIS FRIENDS A LOT, THOUGH
Because he’s so shy, the people who end up being his closest friends are usually the kinder, more patient people who won’t immediately write off that person standing awkwardly by themselves at a party. And you won’t feel like you need to be “on” when you first chill with them because, uh, have you met your own boyfriend?
11. LOUD MEN, IN CONTRAST, WILL IRRITATE YOU MORE THAN THEY DID BEFORE
Once you spend a lot of time with a man who never aggressively tries to out-joke other people or constantly offers cringey commentary during Game of Thrones, you develop an even lower tolerance for the men who do.
12. YOU WILL GET PROTECTIVE ANY TIME A GUY IMPLIES YOUR MAN’S QUIETNESS IS WEAKNESS
But then you’ll remember that lots of men think lots of arbitrary crap is masculine, like overly-hoppy craft beer or wearing boat shoes with socks.
13. SHY MEN ARE BETTER IN BED. THEY JUST ARE
I will die on this hill, but I swear, there is a direct correlation between how rarely a guy talks about his sexual exploits and how skilled and open to your kinks he actually is. His sex life is, as Ron Swanson would curtly say, “epic and private.”
14. HE SHOWS HIS LOVE IN WAY MORE PRACTICAL, PERSONAL WAYS
Sure, he won’t go on and on about how hot you are all the time (which isn’t even indicative of a great guy, tbh). He will, however, snag limited tickets to a concert you’d otherwise forget about because you were too swamped at work. All of that on TOP of telling you he loves you, in that charmingly timid way of his.
15. YOU WILL FALL FOR THE SHYNESS MORE AND MORE
You know him getting stuttery around you or getting so nervous that he actually falls UP a staircase (like my boyfriend did on our first date, true story) just means he is full of the warmest feelings for you.
16. YOU’RE WITH HIM BECAUSE, DEEP DOWN, YOU’RE PROBABLY A LITTLE SHY TOO
Yeah, you may comparatively talk more than him at a party, but if you never experienced social anxiety or the spiritual need to scroll through your phone to avoid small talk, you wouldn’t get him, or love him as much as you do.
16 Things I Wish I Knew Before Dating a Shy Guy
