Shrekking
Marina has her life pretty well together.
She has a good job, works out, reads, travels, has friends, makes plans and generally seems to be doing just fine.
One evening, Marina downloads Tinder and matches with Oleg.
Oleg shows up to their first date wearing rubber slides. Not because they’re meeting at the beach. That’s just what he wears.
His profile says, “No drama.” He doesn’t really read because “there’s already too much information in the world.” He doesn’t have many hobbies either, and when Marina asks what he likes doing in his free time, his answer is something along the lines of, “Oh, you know. Stuff.”
And somewhere deep inside, Marina relaxes.
Oleg feels safe. Surely he’ll appreciate her. After all, the difference between them seems pretty obvious to her.
Now meet Nazar.
Nazar is doing well too. He has a job he actually enjoys, works out, has friends, goes hiking and manages to have interests that extend beyond checking the price of Bitcoin.
And yet, for some reason, he keeps dating roughly the same kind of woman. This time, her name is Vera.
Vera is perfectly nice. It’s just that for the past few years her main hobby has been binge-watching shows, and her five-year plan could probably be summed up as, “We’ll see.”
When Nazar gets excited and tells her about something that matters to him, she says, “Cool,” and goes back to whatever she was watching.
And somehow Nazar feels safe too. Vera definitely isn’t going to wake up one morning, look at him and decide she could find someone more interesting.
Right?
So what do Marina and Nazar have in common?
The internet has come up with a wonderful word for it: shrekking.
The term is used for a dating pattern where someone deliberately or semi-consciously chooses a partner they personally see as “below their league” in some way: looks, income, education, lifestyle, ambition, social confidence or status.
The logic goes something like this: if this person has fewer options than I do, they’ll appreciate me more, look around less and be much less likely to leave me for someone “better.”
The name, of course, comes from Shrek. And at this point I feel the need to apologise to Shrek, because unlike a surprising number of people on dating apps, he could actually love someone, talk about his feelings and owned property.
But the point of shrekking isn’t that one person is objectively “better” than another.
There is no universal dating leaderboard where a degree gets you ten points, visible abs get you seven and rubber slides automatically cost you fifteen.
What matters is how you see the person you’re choosing, and why you’re choosing them.
“I just feel safer with them”
There’s often a very understandable anxiety underneath this kind of dating choice.
If I date someone extremely attractive, other people will want them. If I date someone successful, they’ll have plenty of options. If they’re charismatic, outgoing and socially confident, there will always be people around them.
So what if one day they look at me and realise they could do better?
The mind has a fairly simple solution: choose someone around whom that possibility feels less threatening.
Marina probably isn’t sitting before the date with an Excel spreadsheet that says, “Oleg: looks 5/10, career 4/10, likelihood of leaving: low. Approved.”
Emotionally, it’s much simpler: “I feel safe with him.”
Sometimes that really does mean you feel comfortable and secure with someone. But sometimes “I feel safe” actually means: I’m less afraid this person will reject me.
The problem is that this kind of insurance doesn’t work
Someone being less conventionally attractive doesn’t automatically make them kinder. Someone being less successful doesn’t make them more loyal, and a lack of ambition is not the same thing as emotional intelligence.
More importantly, your partner doesn’t have to view the relationship the same way you do.
Marina might think, “Surely Oleg knows how lucky he is to be with me.”
Meanwhile, Oleg may be thinking, “If a woman like Marina wants me, I must be a pretty great catch.”
The same thing can happen with Nazar and Vera. He assumes she’ll value the relationship more because of everything he brings to it, while she may gradually conclude that if a guy like Nazar is this into her, perhaps she’s much more desirable than she previously thought.
And then comes the really fun part. Our hypothetical Oleg might even start putting Marina down: she doesn’t look that great today, she’s not as clever as she thinks, her cooking isn’t exactly impressive.
Suddenly, the relationship you chose because it seemed safer doesn’t feel particularly safe at all.
But Oleg and Vera aren’t really the most interesting part
The more important question is whether Marina actually wanted Oleg, and whether Nazar genuinely wanted Vera.
Or were they choosing a lower level of emotional risk rather than a person?
Because “Who feels least likely to reject me?” and “Who do I actually want?” can lead you towards very different people.
The second question is much harder. Someone you genuinely desire may not choose you back. They may fall out of love, leave, meet someone else or simply not want a relationship with you.
And no combination of looks, education, income or questionable footwear can guarantee that this won’t happen.
What might actually be hiding underneath shrekking?
Often it isn’t really about having “low standards.” It’s about insecurity.
“People can easily replace me.”
“I’m not interesting enough.”
“A man like that wouldn’t choose me.”
“A woman like that would eventually find someone better.”
“If my partner is very attractive, of course they’ll cheat.”
“If someone has that many options, why would they stay with me?”
Instead of dealing with those fears directly, we may try to arrange our dating life so that they never get triggered at all.
One way of doing that is choosing people around whom we feel we have a clear advantage.
And yes, for a while, that can be reassuring. The problem is that intimacy has never been particularly good at offering guarantees.
So should we all start looking for someone with an MBA, a six-pack and a yacht?
Of course not. Although if that’s genuinely your thing, go for it.
The person who is right for you may earn less than you, have no university degree, hate the gym, spend Sunday afternoons watching Netflix or even wear rubber slides in public.
None of that is the issue.
The question isn’t where your partner ranks. It’s why you chose them.
Are you with this person because you enjoy them? Because you’re attracted to them? Because you like the way they think, laugh, live and treat you and the people around them?
Or are you with them because they make you feel less threatened by competition, rejection and the possibility of being left?
If it’s mostly the second one, then this isn’t really just a dating problem anymore.
It may be more useful to look at your own self-worth, fear of rejection and need for control. Because mature relationships probably aren’t about finding someone who can never leave you.
They’re more about being able to tell yourself: I’m allowed to choose the person I actually want, even though they’re allowed not to choose me back.
And if you notice that you repeatedly choose the person who feels least threatening rather than the person you genuinely want, that may be a very good thing to explore in therapy.