First off here are stats: 26M, 5’11, 195. Moderately active, mainly surf and run for my exercise. 4 years into a career in stem, currently a grad student in advanced stem field.

I’ve been seeing this girl for about 4 months now. She is attractive, very fit, is almost done with an advanced nursing degree, comes from a decent family and is a virgin (as am I). She is a great listener and is totally down with RP concepts as I have crap tested her over the last many months. Both her and her family expect a strong male leader. I dig that a lot. I have a tremendous amount of respect for this woman. The problem is that I don’t “feel” a love her. (I understand that love is a choice. Please keep reading)

I struggle in a few ways. Firstly, I feel like most of the time she is just listening to me talk. In my single 20s up until meeting her I really put forth a lot of time learning how to analyze different topics from theology to economics. I don’t want to be a person that talks people’s ear off if theyre not interested. So I kinda struggle because although I know she is listening (her recall is fantastic) I feel as if she expects me to carry the weight of not only our conversations but our social interactions as a couple. Idk if it’s because she sees me as competent or what. I have asked her about it. She basically says that she defaults to not speaking. I’m just trying to figure out why that would be and what that would mean for a long long term relationship

Secondly, while I do find her to be base line attractive, I don’t think she’s “hot” per say. For example, my married friends often say that the very first thing that they noticed about their wives was that they were extremely attracted to them. For me, that wasn’t the case. What threshold of attraction should be I looking to meet? It would definitely help if she dressed more feminine because as I mentioned before she is extremely fit and has an athletic figure. But I don’t think it’s my place to really steer her how to dress? As a man I kinda expected attraction/presentation to be turnkey and not a project.

So. I guess what it comes down to is that I am with someone that I respect, share common values with, and have good communication with. But i just don’t feel that infatuation that I thought I’d feel. I have prayed about this, and I really feel like I wind up in the same place of having a lot of respect but not feeling like I’d just hit the jackpot.

Any advice? Scripture I could read?