Is this unethical?

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The most important part of a relationship is communication.

Be honest with your current gf about your feelings.

I'm in agreement about the issue with being attracted. I'm ugly, too.. My personality isn't great. I suck at romance. So obviously, I'm not ever going to be with someone who is "hot".. And my girlfriend really isn't physically attractive. But I am attracted to her because there's so much that I like in her. There are more ways to be attracted than by physical appearance. I do think it's important to have some sort of attraction if anything is ever going to work.

Maybe. One of her attractive features is that she's attracted to me. Somehow it seems like it's wrong for me to consider that to be an attractive feature.

It shouldn't be a feature, but a requirement, I'd have thought?

Not even a requirement, but a prerequisite. Women usually have a visceral revulsion toward sexual behaviors with men they're not attracted to. (Similar to how straight men would react to French kissing another man.) It's an evolutionary protective mechanism against bad genes. Men, on the other hand, can lower their physical standards, when in a bind.

To this day, I make a sharp distinction between women I'm actually attracted to and women in my league that I can be with. They aren't mutually exclusive, but I know that dating supermodels will always be an unattainable fantasy for me.

I see what you are saying but I deliberately chose "requirement" rather than "prerequisite" because the person I've had the longest relationship with so far, I wasn't sure if I was attracted to him at first. I wanted to keep seeing him but wasn't sure if it was romantic attraction or a friendship connection. So for the first little while, he was dating someone who didn't necessarily meet the "prerequisite" of being attracted to him, but it turned out great.

OK, you guys were right. I think I screwed things up with the girl formally known as perfect. I think I came across as desperate.

Sounds to me it was more likely that you put her on a pedestal. Here's a hint: NOBODY likes to be considered perfect because it's hard to relax and enjoy yourself for fear of making a mistake. Perfect is an impossibly high standard that will cause anyone to run for the hills. You need to cut that word from your vocabulary.

I didn't actually tell her I thought she was perfect.

I make that mistake all the time.

I tend to idealize people.

Almost always, people feel uncomfortable when they are being idealized.

Save the really heavy compliments for when a person is really down on his/her self.

That doesn't matter, what GHF said is good advice, take the word (and the concept) out of your vocab when it comes to women and dating.

[quote="kraftiekortie"Save the really heavy compliments for when a person is really down on his/her self.[/quote]She was a bit down on her self. I don't understand how a girl that pretty could be critical about her appearance. She described herself as "defective". Yet I didn't give her a single compliment.

I thought if I said she was pretty she'd think I'm creepy or shallow or only care about her appearance. The reason she rejected me was because I came across as desperate, not because I said she was perfect.

Since the other girls have rejected me I'll probably end up with that BPD girl

I don't think most sensible girls mind it if you tell them they're pretty.

I tell girls they're pretty all the time. They don't mind. And I'm 5 foot 5 and 190 lbs. And I'm no Adonis.

It's not like you're saying they're absolutely, bootyliciously beautiful!

Maybe you're right. It's just that they did a survey of OKcupid and found that compliments based on appearance got the lowest response rate. They found that the highest response rate was comments that focused on common interests.

He IS right. The problem is that flattery is cheap. They've heard the lines about how pretty they are to the point they understand why they get those compliments. And they don't lead to relationships.

Gauging common interests is a shortcut to compatibility. Quite simply, follow the Golden Rule. In other words, if you want people to show interest in you, you must first be interested in them. Display that effectively and you'll have them eating out of your hand.