The Art of Attraction: What women(and maybe men) really want

Warning: What you are about to read are my personal thoughts-they are not affiliated with the Wellesley College administration in any way. I just set up my blog on this account because I'm too lazy to keep switching gmail accounts. Also, I am of course up for polite discussion, but I will not squabble with you if you do not agree with my views.

I will put another disclaimer here that human relationships are incredibly complex and that this should definitely not be taken as a guide for the success of all relationships ever. These are just some observations that I have compiled from watching people I care about over the years.

So a few weekends ago, I ordered Dominos pizza online with D. On the website there were pizza tracker's by theme, one of which was a parody of romance fictions where a deep and oh so sexy man's voice said things like "Your pizza is being a prepared in the ovens that burn with the fires of my passion for you." in some indistinguishable European accent.

Hey, Girl...

We had a few giggles about that and then promptly enjoyed our meal. But then I realized that even though Dominos was using a parody, there is actually very serious market for romance novels and Cosmo magazines showing hot guys much as there is a market for Esquire and Playboy magazines for men. So naturally, I tried to think about why that is and then about why you should care(because I care a lot about you thinking deeply about things, anonymous reader).

Almost everyone I know, regardless of age, gender or sexual orientation, cares a lot about the success(or lack thereof) their romantic relationships. Everyone has been attracted to someone in their lifetime and from a biological standpoint, that makes total sense. Being sexually attracted to someone guarantees the reproductive success of our species. That is, if you have a baby with said attractive person, they are likely to survive for some reason.

And when we didn't think too much about anything deeper than that, things were pretty sweet. However, over the centuries, people have developed a slight obsession with the concept of Love, thus rendering sexual attraction(solely) as superficial. In our modern era, Love also means living your life out with someone, possibly with children.

That begs the question: what makes two people compatible for a long term relationship? The ideal that everyone strives for(the living together with children part) makes this incredibly complicated because there are a lot of factors to consider. I'm going to try and break it down as generally as possible though.

The most important distinction between Lust and "Love" is that when people are in Lust for someone they are attracted to the ideal that person implies, whereas when you love someone it has more to do with personality. For example(for you Wellesley ladies out there), if you meet a hot hot Harvard guy at a finals club you may find him attractive because he has the possibility of being rich, well-liked, belonging to something elite, what have you. Being in lust leaves room for people to cast the attractive person into whatever role they want. Essentially, you can still pretend said attractive person is your dream come true and gloss over some of the finer details. When you love a person, there is respect/appreciation for aspects of their personality: their intelligence, their wit, their compassion. These are things that you're not really thinking about when you're casting that person as Prince/Princess Charming. I'll use the example of my friends in general, because I do love them. I would not describe any of them as hot supermodels but everyone brings something unique to the table that I appreciate like humor, spontaneity, solidarity. Being in love means getting to really know a person.

While they say that opposites attract, if you want to travel the world and your significant other wants to stay in the suburbs and have a house with a white picket fence, there is going to be some conflict. Not saying that it won't necessarily work out, but it's definitely an obstacle. As far as personalities, I don't think anyone wants to date themselves but there has to be enough cross-over so that the S.O. can be empathetic to your situation but also bring something new to the table. Most importantly though, it has something to do with realizing that you are with a person, not a photoshopped model or athlete. A person with feelings and thoughts and imperfections, much like yourself and vice versa. For everyone, that is a frightening prospect.

There are a lot of reasons that long term relationship do not work for people. For some people, it is frightening enough that they do not want to open themselves up for longer relationships. Or maybe they're so superficially attractive that they've been approached by people who have no intention of finding out what an awesome personality they have. And of course, there are those individuals stuck in the friendzone who have fantastic personalities but for some reason they do not "click" with the object of their desires.

I think that essentially people want their significant other to be their best friend: someone they can laugh with, and cry with and get through awkward situations with. Usually though, it takes a lot of effort to notice such a person.

So with that, I will give you one piece of advice that will hopefully increase your chances at finding this concept of "Love" with someone: Don't show them the person you could be or want to be; show them the person that you are.