I Dated Oxford Men So You Don’t Have To.

Eight weeks into my Oxford term, after enough pints to kill a Victorian child and enough small talk to power a minor political campaign, I have conducted an experiment. A social one. Or maybe just a nosy one. The guiding question: What are Oxford men like? 

 

My curiosity stemmed from the suspicion that whatever blonde-ness [1] I possess back home would be magnified here. A bubbly American visiting student who, by virtue of accent and hair, could easily be misfiled into the category of fun but unserious. I’m not even here from a top-20 elite American university. My school is entirely respectable, but not an Ivy whose name wields some credibility. And while I’m reasonably sharp, I’ve learned that people, men and women alike, often prefer me in my soft-focus setting: lightly scatterbrained and sunnily agreeable. It’s a strange thing when you understand that people underestimate you because it makes their lives more comfortable. And maybe yours, too.

 

Before arriving, I worried the ‘dumb American girl’ trope would reach its evolutionary peak in Oxford. I wondered whether the men here would take me seriously, or whether I’d become a silly spectacle, an export from the land of high fructose corn syrup and political chaos.

 

As an American abroad, you’re always one question away from being asked to morally defend the entire nation. Unfortunately, date one fulfilled this. Within 15 minutes, Mr. Justice had descended into an interview about Roe v. Wade and the overall collapse of American governance. I spent forty minutes feeling like a walking CNN segment as if I was personally responsible for the judicial branch. He wasn’t cruel, just deeply invested in The Discourse. I left feeling like I’d passed an oral exam. Romantic.

 

But it got more humorous. Mr. LinkedIn was post-master’s and unemployed, but earnest about it. Nothing wrong with that, the job market sucks. What made me laugh was that he explained he has somehow accumulated 10k + followers on LinkedIn. He has never posted, but one day reached enough connections from uni peers that people started following him assuming he had Linkedin Clout. I fact checked, it’s true. He has no posts, no profile picture, no listed education or experience. Not even any AI slob posts about boosting your productivity. The LinkedIn-of-it-all. I don’t even have the app on my phone these days because it makes me want to vomit all over late-stage capitalism. 

 

Mr. America was really charming. He’s an MBA student here sponsored by a top consulting firm, which set off every alarm I have. Then he opened his mouth and was…annoyingly charming. Some good-ole American-Southern charisma, bright smile, the whole thing. He talked a lot about his job, but only because I kept asking. He’s in “chemical consulting,” sounded sinister until it turned out he mostly worked with soap companies. Soap. The man helps mid-market soap companies do things better. His very first case was with a family-owned soap manufacturer in the Midwest whose entire business model hinges on one competitive moat: they invented floating soap. He described all this with such good humor that I couldn’t stop picturing a sitcom cold open—a wide-eyed new consultant gets assigned to the Floating Soap Account with mysterious accounting books and a patriarch who refuses to adopt Excel. We got gyros and chips afterward and I realized I actually liked him. A devastating blow to my anti-consultant agenda.

 

Some dates were more surreal, like the guy who asked hypothetical questions more intensity than a philosophy fresher. Would you rather fight a chicken every time you get in a car, or fight a gorilla once a year at a completely random and unpredictable time? Chicken I guess. I mostly take public transit anyway. Would you rather give up sauces or kissing? Kissing. I love ketchup way too much. Would you rather get a million dollars now or $100 every time you sneeze for a year? I guess I’d need to do some math. But maybe a million now because I don’t get allergies much. Well guess what, he’s been doing the accounting. In a moment of stunning intimacy, he opened his Notes app. Inside was a detailed log of every sneeze he’d had in 2025. Over two thousand. 2047 to be specific. A sneeze ledger. Strange, but kind of delightful. 

 

And then ended up on an accidental date. It was my fault, I totally misread the situation. I’d made friends with two people at a coffee shop near me—one was an employee, the other a sort of washed-up student who always seemed to be there ‘doing work’ (the question mark remains). Whenever she was on shift, he’d be there too, keeping her company, and when I’d walk by I’d poke my head in to say hi. Naturally, I assumed they were together. And honestly, if I hadn’t thought they were dating, I might’ve assumed he swung the other way. Turns out I was wrong on both counts. One day he followed me on Instagram—fine, casual—and messaged to ask how an interview went that I’d been preparing for in the shop. I answered enthusiastically because it felt sweet that he remembered, and also because I’m a nice girl who replies to things. A few messages later he asked if I wanted to get pints. That was the moment the penny dropped and I realised, with a sinking little thud, that I had completely misread the situation. But part of me still tried to rationalise it as friendly. Friendly is good. He was very kind and warm,  which made me feel even more guilty for misreading the entire social situation from day one.The whole thing had that fuzzy, awkward quality of a social situation you didn’t realise was happening until you were already inside it. I walked home feeling like I needed to send a formal apology to the universe.

 

Then I hit a lower low. I can barely bring myself to type this because it reads like bad satire, but here we are. Australian fresher, studying law. I ask the harmless, polite question: what kind of law? Corporate, he says. Eventually wants to work at a bank. Then he hits me—stone-cold, all too sincere—with: ‘Have you ever heard of The Wolf of Wall Street? Kind of like that. Just get crazy rich.’

 

I thought he was joking. He was not. My soul left my body and I had to physically swallow a laugh. I kept waiting for a wink or some tiny flicker of self-awareness that would signal he understood how deranged that sounded. Nothing. Just the steady glow of blind confidence radiating from someone who wholeheartedly believes he is destined to be Jordan Belfort, and it would be easy. Meanwhile I’m sitting there like: sir, I live in New York, I’m literally going into finance—of course I’ve heard of the movie. Of course I’ve seen the memes. He, apparently, had not. Or worse, had seen them and thought they were aspirational. 

 

In fact, this is exactly the type of guy who drove me to sell out. Years of me being stubborn and contrarian, convinced I’d take some noble, interesting path. Dumb, narcissistic finance bros who all think they’re going to ‘make it,’ who talk like the universe owes them a seven-figure bonus. It irritated me so deeply and so consistently that something snapped. I realised I could do it better. I could take their job, outrun them, out-think them, make more money than them, and have actual self-awareness while doing it. So thank you, Mr. Belfort, for feeding into my career drive.

 

By week six, I’d begun noticing patterns. Clothing choices ranged from tweed and loafers to sweatpants and headphones permanently parked around the neck like a decorative collar. Almost every date involved pints, which I respect as a choice; pub lighting softens everyone’s flaws, turns awkwardness into charm. 

 

A surprising outcome: most of these men were… nice. Generally nice. Not dazzling or extraordinary, not villainous or dangerous—just normal. If anything surprised me, it was my own suspicion going in. I tend to assume male disaster is imminent at all times. I kept assuming I’d be met with hostility or indifference, that I’d be treated like some misfiled document in the Oxford system. Instead, most people just seemed a little puzzled that I’d appeared in their orbit—and then, almost always, were nice enough. The worst I got was low-grade cluelessness. And honestly, cluelessness is survivable.

 

The dating app part of the experiment was less heartening. I’d never used apps before, and suddenly having hundreds of Hinge messages felt artificial and a little grotesque. I’m sure they work beautifully for many people, but something about the instant banter and screen-mediated flirting made me feel out of myself.

 

By the end of the eight weeks, I’d accumulated enough lines in my Notes app on pub toilet trips to fill a small diary—or at least an article. And here’s what I learned: Oxford men are just men. Smart, sure. Socially odd, sometimes. Occasionally tragic in their ambitions. Frequently overconfident. Unintentionally hilarious. A sneeze-counter here, a LinkedIn phantom there, an aspiring Jordan Belfort to haunt my dreams forever.

 

[1] The blonde-ness I talk about here is not so much the hair color as the projected qualities: approachable, nonthreatening, intellectually declawed.

 

Words by Quinn Burke. The Graphic Work of Egon Schiele (1922) — detail (24467567963) via Wikipedia Commons