What is attraction?

Attraction is a funny phenomenon. It’s so difficult to pin down. Over the years I’ve heard bits and pieces of psychological explanations for why we find certain people more attractive than others. There’s the evolutionary explanation that certain features signal greater reproductive potential. There are theories about pheromones and a woman’s monthly cycle. There are social explanations such as mere exposure. And so on. But none of these seem to take away from the mystery.

And then add homosexuality to the mix, and the question becomes even more complex. The whole evolutionary explanation goes out the window in some respects. I don’t know much about the men’s side of things, but in terms of ladies being attracted to ladies, there’s such a huge spectrum – there’s femme on femme, butch and femme, butch on butch…and a bunch inbetween…and a bunch that don’t fit these labels at all.

Sometimes I look at couples walking down the street and have the knee jerk reaction of how did he end up with her, or how did she end up with him (or various other pronoun combinations). There’s always the joke that after years together, couples start to look alike, but there’s also a whole passel of combinations that are surprising.

And then of course there are the stories of people who weren’t attracted to each other at all until they got to know one another better and then all of a sudden, sparks flew. There is definitely something that personality and identity add to the combination. Someone you know and really like is more attractive to you than they may be to a stranger who doesn’t know them as well.

I don’t actually have any answers. It’s just a topic that I find really interesting. Part of realizing I’m gay has opened up a new world for me in terms of viewing people as attractive or not. I’ve gone through the majority of my life not really reacting to those around me – I didn’t find guys attractive and didn’t give myself permission to look at girls that way. So now I’m finally looking around for the first time and collecting my own data.

I seem to have certain expectations and stereotypes that affect what I think I might be attracted to but reality has a way of confounding that. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve been asked what my ‘type’ is. Sometimes I’ve said I don’t know and sometimes I’ve listed certain characteristics. But I’m discovering that an itemized list kind of goes out the window when it comes to actually encountering someone who makes you stand up and go “wow”. During such an encounter, you aren’t consulting your list. It’s not even on your radar. There’s just some undefinable ‘something’ about the person you are looking at or interacting with that is attractive. And sometimes, after the fact, you go back to your list to compare notes and shake your head and realize just how useless the attempt to define attraction really is.