The Art Of Attraction: 16 Invisible Factors That Pull Two People Together
Chemistry is a dozen subtle forces you can't quite name.
Brock Wegner | Unsplash If attraction were always mutual, it stands to reason that you would always be attracted to the people who are attracted to you and vice versa. However, that's not always the case. Certain factors can predict whether or not a mutual attraction will form.
In a phone interview with Joan Childs, author of I Hate The Man I Love, explained that initial attraction is chemical. What you're feeling when you're instantly attracted to someone is lust at first sight. Chemistry is what you feel when you want a special someone to hug and kiss you. That first jolt of attraction you feel is purely physical because we, as human beings, need a connection with another person. It's how we are made.
Here are 16 invisible factors that pull two people together:
1. Readiness
When you are looking for a relationship, physical attraction doesn't last long. So, if you are not in a good place to get emotionally involved, your relationship may not last long. Attraction fades fast because you don't have enough time to get to know each other better.
2. Isolation
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Having the chance to spend some quality time together gives you enough time to really get to know each other. You will create a stronger emotional bond by sharing space and collaborating. And you will feel attracted to each other on a deeper level through the shared experiences.
3. Similarity
When you are looking for potential partners, people tend to gravitate toward those who look like them and have the same traditions, customs, and values. Researchers asked, "Is actual similarity necessary for attraction?" and the results indicated a strong association between interpersonal attraction, actual similarity, and perceived similarity. Perceived similarity between individuals predicted attraction in a majority of existing relationship studies.
4. Emotional attraction
Childs stressed in the interview that "human beings are wired for connections and when we disconnect we go into crisis" because "the brain needs another brain to feel regulated." So, as humans, we need to be with someone on a romantic level. That's where attraction comes into play.
Liking someone for more than just physical appearance is a great characteristic to make attraction to someone last. You just have to care for one other person more than just on a physical level, and that's attractive.
5. Desirability
Both physical and personality characteristics are important to consider when looking for a particular partner. You have to decide what your list of most important characteristics is that you need in a partner, because a relationship is so much more than that initial spark of attraction. Some of the most important qualities Childs frequently promotes as necessary in a relationship are honesty, partnership, and comparable intellectuality.
6. Fulfillment
When you are attracted to someone, you have to fulfill each other's needs to live a happy life with each other. They have to fulfill each other's needs for companionship, love, family (if you want one), and more. It's hard to stay attracted to someone when your needs are not being filled.
For a relationship to last past that first initial wave of attraction, you have to find out what the most important things are that you need in a relationship and from a partner. When you are in the attraction stage of a relationship, you only see the best of them, but for a relationship, you have to see, and more importantly, accept, their faults, too.
7. Proximity
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When you live in the same areas, you have a greater chance of running into each other and creating a sense of knowing each other because you see each other more. Thus, finding attraction through familiarity.
To know a relationship is actually going to last past the attraction phase, Childs suggested that a person only knows if someone's truly into you with time. "Time always tells," says Childs, because waiting is the best way to make sure they are into you. Waiting allows you to form some kind of friendship before jumping into bed, which she suggests waiting at least three months before doing.
8. Diet
It turns out a person's diet can play an important role in attraction. A 2017 study found that women were attracted to sweaty men who ate more produce than men who ate more carbs.
The results showed how "greater fruit and vegetable intake, was significantly associated with more pleasant smelling sweat (with more floral, fruity, sweet, and medicinal qualities), independent of sweat intensity. and dietary data revealed that fat, meat, egg, and tofu intake was associated with more pleasant-smelling sweat, and greater carbohydrate intake with stronger-smelling, less pleasant sweat."
9. Hormones
When hormones are balanced, we are more attracted to people. Men specifically are historically more interested in women with a feminine appearance.
Research on preferences for masculinity/femininity in human faces "reflected a long evolutionary history of social selection from large-scale, industrialized, urban populations. One possibility is that highly developed environments provide novel opportunities to discern relationships between facial traits and behavior by exposing individuals to large numbers of unfamiliar faces, revealing patterns too subtle to detect."
10. Smell
Interestingly, men are attracted to women with certain smells. This is because women with higher estrogen and low progesterone levels smell better, and men are attracted to that smell because it indicates high fertility.
A study investigated individual differences in the body odors of women. Researchers "examined whether some women generally smell more attractive than others or whether odor preferences are a matter of individual taste." The results showed that "women's body odor attractiveness is explained by levels of female reproductive hormones, but not by levels of cortisol or testosterone."
11. Fertility
Another study found that certain feminine aspects are attractive to men. In the study, "men rated their female partner as more attractive near to ovulation (when fertile) as compared to during the luteal cycle phase or during hormonal contraceptive use." The results suggested that men are attracted to a woman when they are more fertile, and their face and voice sound more attractive.
12. Kindness
When you find that someone is kind, they immediately become more attractive and likable. Life coach Debra Smouse explained, "There is joy in kindness. There is a sense of pride in acts of caring. Small gestures of affection remind me that I'm an active contributor to the overall health of our relationship. Those love nuggets I generously sprinkle in his life return to me tenfold in my own sense of satisfaction in my daily life."
13. Voice
Women instinctively find men with lower voices to be much more attractive, especially right before their ovulation period. Did you know that deeper voices are linked to producing healthier children?
A study of a population of hunter-gatherers showed there are reproductive selection preferences for low-pitch voices in men. The findings found that voice pitch was not related to reproductive outcomes in women, but men with low voice pitch had higher reproductive success.
14. Maturity
Knowing what you want from a relationship is so much more attractive, and as you mature, you pay attention to more than just physical attraction. Psychotherapist Heather Hans advised, "Know what you need. Knowing your endpoint is how you get there, like a designated destination on a map. Knowing your needs can take time and experience, especially in intimate relationships. One of the ways we discover what we need is by the absence of it in our past relationships."
15. Taste
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The physical attraction of kissing makes you feel a deeper attraction to your partner. Also, when you kiss, your body releases oxytocin that makes you feel good as well.
A study examined the possible functions of kissing in romantic relationships, and the results explained how kissing can evaluate suitability and mediate attachment, and kissing frequency was found to be related to relationship satisfaction.
16. Health
Research showed that health is an important feature because people are attracted to those who are healthy. If someone gets enough sleep, exercises, and takes care of themselves, they are more likely to be attractive to a larger group of suitors.
Overall, it's important for you to make known what you need from a relationship. You need more than just the first few months of attraction to make a relationship work.
Moreover, Childs wants everyone to remember that for relationships, the beginning is only chemistry based on a gut feeling of attraction, then it evolves into something more with time together. You don't want to be just attracted to someone for your body or a physical attraction. You want people to be attracted to you for who you are.
Therefore, for someone to have their attraction turn into something more in the long run, you have to have that initial spark of attraction. Attraction brings you together, but it takes work to evolve your attraction into something so much more.
Instead of acting on your physical attraction, start to learn more about your partner and understand what you need to turn this attraction you have for someone into something that may last forever, just not inside the bedroom. And always remember, if it doesn't work out the first time, you will find love again because everyone is capable of falling in love more than once in their lifetime.
Emily Francos is a writer and editor whose work focuses primarily on astrology, lifestyle, and relationships.
