I think that every guy who has some dorky habits dreams of finding the perfect woman, beautiful, fun, loving, and loves all of our geeky habits. She reads Spider-Man comics, loves anime, has a Slave Leia outfit, and may or may not speak Klingon (at least a few words).

I actually do have a friend who has found himself the perfect geek woman. One of the stops on their honeymoon was to a comic book convention, he had a Green Lantern ring made of Amethyst and Diamonds for Valentine’s Day, and they can actually use both the sentence, “we talked about Star Trek: Deep Space Nine for an hour”, and “we weren’t expecting things to go so well” to describe their first date.

I am very happy for them, and they are very happy together.

It is pretty rare though for a man to find a woman who shares his love for all things geek.

Have you been to a comic book convention? The guy to girl ratio is pretty darn high. It is not a place to go to have good chances of finding love. I hear Star Trek and Sci-Fi conventions are even worse (I’ve never been to one – honest!)

Most of the time, the geeky guy ends up dating a less geeky woman, just as a result of numbers. And that’s great! I’ve never dated a woman that was really into any dorky stuff. One of them said she really liked Star Trek, but she never really acted on it. She may have just been trying to impress me..

So now you’ve got a girlfriend, or a woman you are dating, because you have followed all my other awesome advice on this blog, and you are wondering how you can share your love of all things geek with her.

It makes sense, after all. I love comics. I really really love comics. I think the medium is incredibly fun, amazing, and has incredible potential for storytelling and communication. I also just love geeky comics of Batman kicking butt (or just making drawings on the walls of caves way back in time, as he seems to be doing now).

Of course I would love to share my love of this with a woman. It’s important to me.

But then again, there is reality

I came to a stark conclusion after a few desperate attempts to share with women just why comics are so cool: They don’t care. No matter how much I love comics, that isn’t going to transfer over to her. She’s not ever going to love Star Wars even a tenth as much as I do. It just isn’t going to happen.

An even more important conclusion for me was when I realized that not only was she never going to be really interested in what I like, was when I realized that I was OK with that. I don’t mind that she doesn’t love my geeky stuff. I still enjoy it just as much.

Of course, if she does show an interest, I am prepared to share some stuff with her. I’ll give her a Strangers In Paradise book, Sandman, or Bone, and see how she likes that. If she likes it, I’ll give her more. If she shows any interest in Anime, I’ll watch Totoro with her, or some other Miyazaki film. If she is interested in some Sci-Fi I’ll take her to the latest Star Trek movie, or give her Stranger in a Strange Land to read. I’ll test the waters to see if she groks it. What I won’t do is overwhelm her with the stuff I love, or put any pressure on her to try it out.

Maybe she won’t ever be interested though. That is fine. I actually am not too interested in dating a woman that likes comics or Star Wars. I like having my own hobbies and interests. I’ve found ways to allow that side of me, those geeky hobbies, to flourish, without the need to share them with the women I date.

For one, I do them on my own time. I would never sit around and read a comic when spending time with a woman, or when she comes over to hang out. I enjoy my time with her, and leave the geeky stuff for my own time.

Also, I have found like minded guys who also love the stuff I love. I get to share this with them. I’ve got a decent group of comic geeks that I know in my area. Every now and then we will get together for a day, maybe go on a crawl to a bunch of comic shops, or go see some geeky movie, like we did when Wolverine: Origins came out in the theater. I got to really relish in my geekiness, without the need to share it with any women.

Keep it in perspective

back in college, my girlfriend was talking about some of the guys in her dorm building, and how disgusting she thought it was that they just played video games all the time. They just wasted their time on silly games.

What I didn’t tell her was that I wished I could just play video games all the time.

What women want is a man that has passions and inspiration in his life, and works to do and achieve stuff in line with those passions. It is one of those qualities of a man that is almost universally attractive. It goes back to the saying that the best way to meet women is to have something better to do than to meet women.

This goes back to the second post in this series about dating for dorks, when I wrote about having other things in your life besides your geekeries. If all you do with your time is read comics, or play video games, or perfect your Klingon fighting technique and language pronunciation, then yes, you may have a hard time finding a woman who finds that attractive. When it is just a small part of the overall picture, then you are in good shape.

Sometimes, at the end of the week, I want nothing more than to hop on my Xbox 360 and play Call of Duty with some friends and decompress from a week of working. I don’t do that every night though, nor would I want to. Nor would my women want me to either.

When you’ve got the rest of your life under control, then spending your extra time on your geekery of choice is no big deal. Better yet, you can do what my friend Dave does, and align his passions with his geekeries. Read his web comic, Space-Time Condominium. Dave is a geek at heart, but his passions are in making and drawing comics. He does both, and it shows in what he does and how he behaves. Plus, I mention him because he is an amazing wingman.

Don’t stop loving your geeky stuff, just find the time to love it, and don’t push it on the women in your life. Live and let live.

Coming up in the next post: I have no idea what.