I know I was one of the aforementioned with the asking. And my question, if I recall, wasn't so much "why are you single" as "where are all the hordes of women who by all rights should be throwing themselves in droves at someone as talented, interesting and attractive as yourself?"
To which the answer was, more or less, "scared off by the intense, the quirky and the geeky". Which I do understand - the geeky and the quirky appeals to a somewhat limited set (to which I myself belong, so I know we exist).
As for the intensity, it's a non-trivial balancing excercise to allocate it to everyone's satisfaction. (If you're intense about someone, it's important to not be scary and stalkery. If you're intense about other projects and not the someone who's there, they might start to feel a bit less important, which isn't good, either.)
I don't think the first impressions are the problem here. I think those work out just fine, as evidenced by existence of first dates that don't have follow-ups. The second impressions are harder - when the shiny (and yes, there's plenty of shiny) starts getting supplemented by the realization of just how quirky the quirky is. Which is indeed not everyone's cuppa.
Being an acquired taste is not a mark of eternal doom. It may well reduce the number of people who "get" one immediately, or that don't go running for the hills at the first sign of oddity, but the ones who go to the trouble of acquiring the taste are usually that much more worth it.
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I know I was one of the aforementioned with the asking. And my question, if I recall, wasn't so much "why are you single" as "where are all the hordes of women who by all rights should be throwing themselves in droves at someone as talented, interesting and attractive as yourself?"
To which the answer was, more or less, "scared off by the intense, the quirky and the geeky". Which I do understand - the geeky and the quirky appeals to a somewhat limited set (to which I myself belong, so I know we exist).
As for the intensity, it's a non-trivial balancing excercise to allocate it to everyone's satisfaction. (If you're intense about someone, it's important to not be scary and stalkery. If you're intense about other projects and not the someone who's there, they might start to feel a bit less important, which isn't good, either.)
I don't think the first impressions are the problem here. I think those work out just fine, as evidenced by existence of first dates that don't have follow-ups. The second impressions are harder - when the shiny (and yes, there's plenty of shiny) starts getting supplemented by the realization of just how quirky the quirky is. Which is indeed not everyone's cuppa.
Being an acquired taste is not a mark of eternal doom. It may well reduce the number of people who "get" one immediately, or that don't go running for the hills at the first sign of oddity, but the ones who go to the trouble of acquiring the taste are usually that much more worth it.