Physical attraction is the most immediately accessible form of attraction. When you first encounter someone, their physical appearance is all that’s available for consideration without having any formal or informal interaction with them.
Most often, if there is no physical attraction, there is little opportunity for any connection to take place. There is no urge for a man to initiate contact with a woman apart from some form of attraction. When there is physical attraction, he initiates contact to begin establishing rapport.
Related: Act like a lady, think like a man, attract a gentleman.
The question is, what role did she play in his interest? Did she attract him or was he attracted to her based upon his own interests? This may sound like word play, but it’s not. When you say you “attracted someone,” it suggests that you controlled their interests when, in fact, you did not.
When a woman wakes up and chooses the clothes she will wear, how she will style her hair, apply her make up, etc., her finished look represents what she considers attractive based upon whatever standard of beauty that governs her idea of beauty. She has no way of knowing which or how many men she will encounter from afar or up close.
There are some who will see her without her ever knowing. For those who will chance to see her on any given day, she has no notion of what each man’s idea of beauty is in order to present herself accordingly. That would be too much of a burden for any woman and an exercise in futility considering beauty is set by the observer not the observed.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Physical attraction is instantaneous when someone you see meets your minimum standard of beauty. The emphasis is on “your minimum standard of beauty” and not that of the person of interest. The object of desire does not determine who finds them attractive. They are only the object.
We all are drawn to what we find attractive. We are not compelled by those that wish to attract us. If a person does not meet a minimum standard of beauty upon noticing them, they will not hold our attention beyond the time it takes to take a good look at them.
The Law of Choice
You have probably heard of “the law of attraction.” I’ll admit I have some concerns with the legitimacy of this law. That’s one for another discussion. The real power is in the ability to choose. I refer to this as “the law of choice.”
At best, you have a limited ability to affect/control what’s attractive to someone else. You have total control of your choices. There is no argument that you have the power to choose who you will give space in your life. The question is “what governs your choices in who you date?” Why do you choose the types of men you choose to date? What influences those choices?
Popular culture is more influential than most may think or care to admit. “Entertainment is the most subtle form of indoctrination.” Entertainment was the mechanism employed to teach us our abc’s. We didn’t even know we were learning the building blocks that allow communication with written words to be possible. As kids, we were just learning a fun song.
Through entertainment and other forms of media, we are inundated with images, ideas and all types of content via television, radio, and print daily. They shaped how we view the world around us and how we fit into this vast fluid reality.
The relationship that was observed between parents also played a big part in understanding how men and women should relate to one another in relationships. Depending on that relationship, certain lessons were learned. If both parents were not present, that had another effect.
There are a number of of other variables that affect one’s choices. All of the prior events in your life have offered contributions that have caused you to respond to them. It’s important to know that who you are is not the result of what happened to you in life though you have heard this. “Who you are is the result of how you have responded to what happened to you in life.”
In many cases, you had no choice in what happened to you. You only had a choice in how you responded to the events of life. The same is true in who you choose to spend your life with. You are given the power and ability to choose who that special person will be.
That is your choice.
Prepare yourself by taking inventory. Make certain that you have reconciled issues that need healing. This does not require you to have achieved personal perfection. It requires you to have addressed whatever internal issues that need to be reconciled and to be actively growing in those areas.
Related: Do you avoid the past? Here are 2 ways to let it go for good.
It places you in a healthy state of being where you don’t make choices to define yourself by who you’re involved with. When you’re healthy, you’re able to effectively use the power to choose that you have been given.
“Relationships are like mirrors to the soul. Mirrors reflect how we see ourselves on the outside. Relationships reflect how we see ourselves on the inside.” It’s not who you attract that matters. Many will be attracted to you over the course of your life. Who will you choose? That is where the real power lies.
BMWK, how did your relationship come about, by choice or attraction?