The Real Reasons To Date A Girl Who Reads

This is a reblog from a tumblr post I read a few weeks ago. The sentiment is quite nice.

Date a girl who reads, because you fell in love with her, and reading is a part of who she is. Date a girl who spends her money on essentials like clothing and food, takes showers, and goes to the library for books. She’s used her parents library card since she was 12.

Find your girl. You’ll know her by her smile and by the way she waves you over to her table at a local coffee shop. It’s the only place with free WiFi — why else would she be there instead of home, reading? Sit down. She won’t glare, because you share classes, or work together, or have met several times already. Anything else would have been creepy. Offer to get her another mug of tea, because hers is cold already.

She’ll say no, and you’ll listen. Ask her what she likes to read. Don’t bring out a list of fancy authors, or drill her on James Joyce. Just listen, because you’re interested in what she has to say. Reply with your opinion, because you want to keep the conversation going. The girl who reads will have a list of books she wants to get, and she will have it in her purse for just-in-case. You’ll see it when you recommend a book.

It’s not easy to date, and it’s not easy to date a girl who reads. She’ll want to finish just that last chapter before going out — and then another. The books you give her for her birthday will find their way to the library donation pile, because she’s read them already, or doesn’t want to read them yet, and you didn’t know. She’ll laugh when you get her Cummings, or Sexton, or Pound. And when you write her poetry, she’ll pretend to love it. You won’t try again, because poetry, like self-esteem and loving, isn’t easy.

You’ve found a girl who reads, and she’ll always have an unfinished book in her bag. She won’t cry over finding a book she wanted, because she knows the world is full of books and love and it’s only a matter of waiting, working, and loving. She’ll breathe in the air of libraries and smile. She doesn’t sniff pages too much, though, unless she’s trying to pin down a suspicious odor in the room.

Let her know you understand that words and love are two different things. Show her the latter, because she too understands that books aren’t reality and there is a difference between dreaming and living.

Don’t lie to her, not about the important things. She loves you not because you try to fail her for a climax later on, not because she knows relationships end, but because you’ll get her silly book jokes.
She doesn’t want literary lies and drama and betrayals in her love. And she will always have books and ice-cream to pull her through a break-up when she ends it. You’re not sure she will survive. She knows she can.

Date a girl who reads because she wants to date you back. Live and love her. Propose to her. Have children and family story nights, and when you’ve grown old together, don’t expect her to remember Keats or where she left her book list. The love in your gazes is enough.

Date a girl you love and who loves you back, because you deserve it. That girl can share the world with you. And the next. And the next. And if she reads, remember to stop by IKEA for another bookshelf — or five — when you move in together.

Don’t date a girl because she reads.

Don’t finish your affair and say, I’d rather date a girl who writes.

Because there is no sense in that either.