Rules of Attraction... Who Gets Them?

The other day 3 guy friends and I were sitting at Ananda, my favorite veggie restaurant, and we began a discussion about attraction. This is a very tricky subject. One of my friends said we attract certain kinds of people depending on how we are inside at the moment. For example, if a man likes to dominate and mistreat women, he will likely attract and be attracted to weak ladies. Even if, when they meet, neither of them knows this, it's like we have a radar of some kind or magnets that work with only certain polarities.

That is also probably why we tend to have a certain "type." We can see this in the kinds of people our friends like or even ourselves. What is elusive is that this type thing goes beyond the physical, often including personality traits without you even knowing the people you're attracting. It's weird. There's also those times when I have even been attracted to men who are, in appearance, "my type" and after some interaction, for unexplained reasons the magnetic effect fades out- even when we get along great and all seems to go well. But you can't force these things, right?

Another issue that came up was how some people attract you so strongly that you even do illogical things only when you're with them- things that you normally wouldn't do with or for anyone else. So we went on about how important it is to use our brains even during these yummy magnetisms because if it's a situation that is really not convenient, that would have undesirable consequences, an extra rational effort is necessary to keep our cool. First of all, we're not animals, and second, if we blindly consummated every desire for every person we've been attracted to, we'd all be the most promiscuous of whores.

Yet one more funny comment that was made is how sometimes we may see a beautiful woman or man with quite the unattractive partner, and they just don't seem to match. In cases like these, it's evident that the attraction is beyond the physical. There are other cases where the partner constantly emotionally mistreats the other, yet the couple stays together. This attraction goes beyond a favorable personality.

So, what is it that determines whether people are attracted to each other or not? What is this that determines the flame should ignite or suddenly disappear? Why, exactly, do people fall in love?