Current Mood:Contemplative
Music Playing: Ben Gibbard, Home Volume 5
What is it that draws two people together? I guess its my romantic nature that makes me want to believe that when people come together, it is due to fate; whether you were meant to date for a month, a year or the rest of your life, fate is what brought you together. “Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart.” (Marcus Aurelius) Putting aside astrology and chemistry; your life is a sort of first draft, and when you start living your life, you complete the final draft as you go along. But in that first draft are the moments and the people that change your life. “Life is not how many breaths you take, it's how many moments take your breath away.” (Hitch) Even harder to grasp are those moments of “courting” and what is it that actually draws you to that specific specimen over another. Everyday we probably see half a dozen or more people that we find attractive, but how do we end up actually talking with them, flirting with them, dating them? I think this question is so elusive, that even finding words to describe how you get to that point of feeling smitten is difficult. Perhaps we feel a sort of emotional comfort just from observing the other, and so we forget about taking a risk, and just go for it, and the rest is history. But for the life of me I can’t remember a time where I wasn’t absolutely terrified to talk to a girl for the first time. Recently I found myself in a similar situation; there is a girl that I met months ago, and at first, as usual I found myself a bit faclempt; but I recently had the pleasure of actually taking her out for an evening. That night, it was as if everything came together, and talking came easily and naturally. By mid evening I was totally smitten, this girl was beautiful, smart, funny, and loved food and wine, what more could I ask for. At the end of the night, back at her place on the couch, it was as if there were magnets attached to us and we were slowly being drawn to each other. We went from a small gap between us on the couch to cuddled underneath the blanket, legs delicately draped across my lap. After just one night with this girl, I was in this position of intimacy, yet it didn’t seem foreign at all… Everything was so cozy; it was as if I had been there before with her. Is this when we start to believe in cupid and his love arrows? Is cupid just fate dressed as a cherub strapped with a quiver of arrows? We constantly read magazines about how to attract the right person, or how to keep them once we get them, but there is really no science to attracting a mate, if it happens, it is because it was meant to happen. So here I am on the couch with this incredible girl and it just feels right… the night progressed… (Sorry that part is inappropriate for blogging)… And then here’s the kicker… she lives in Boston. What is the reason for this? Is this girl everything my mind has created her to be? Is there something there? Or was it just one extraordinarily magical evening? “We touch one another, bond and break, drift away on force-fields we don’t understand.”(Written On The Body, Jeanette Winterson) There’s part of me that wants to drop everything and move to Boston, who cares about how cold it is; I could learn to love the cold if I could learn to love her. But, I think I’ll need at least a 2nd date first…
We are attracted to one of two different types of people: the people that we have a lot in common with, or the person that is almost opposite of us; but strangely, they end up being complimentary. How are we to decide which is better? The only answer is experimenting, finding out what feels better, solace in familiarity or, stimulation in new discovery (this is why we date). "Can love have texture?" (Written On The Body, Jeanette Winterson) I believe so; when we can begin to feel, that is the texture of love, this is not to be confused with the texture of lust, (We are all drawn together by a physical attraction in the beginning, it's is only when we can wade through each others minds and hearts to find out whether there is texture there that we can begin investigating the possibility of love) That is the position I find myself in, I felt something, it wasn’t just lust, because there was so much more that happened before we got to the lust part of the evening…
There’s overwhelming evidence to suggest that we are attracted to people who are consistent with our ideal self. In essence we are attracted to someone that will bring out that part of you that you wish you could express. The person who is well traveled, and you are not, the person that lives free-spirited and you only wish you could get out of the place you are in. Then there is the theory of chemistry, pheromones and testosterone working interconnected with dopamine and serotonin creating a giant ball of chemical love. But my brain does not think that scientifically, I do like the way girls smell and serotonin does play a major role in our brains when falling in love, but the whole science of things is too much to think about, what draws two people together has to be simpler then that. Some people say it is in the stars, astrology; some people swear by it and will only date people that match up with their sign…I’m sorry that’s just a bit too eccentric for my thinking… Psychologists have shown it takes between 90 seconds and 4 minutes to decide if you fancy someone. 55% is through body language 38% is the tone and speed of their voice and only 7% is through what they say, so that night, over half of what happened between us was done without the amazing conversation; it was in the leaning towards each other at the bar, the soft touches on the small of her back, every nuance that was done without opening our mouths had more of an impact in drawing us together then talking did.
So do we have an answer of what draws two people together? Not really, but apparently it happens a lot easier then what you make it out to be; a lot of it happens unconsciously and your body language does a lot of speaking for you, I guess your job, during the 7% of dialogue, is not to screw it up by saying something stupid…
