Warning: The following article has little or no relation to “Laws of attraction for the universe”

This piece of writing is all about how we pick our partners in relationships, how we fake ourselves and reflect a desired version of ourselves much like a peacock in its prime. At first, we tend to show others what we are actually not. Then, try hard to change each other in our image of a perfect partner, but weren’t their initial qualities what attracted us in the first place?

What we are trying to do in our romantic endeavors, fits Marcel Proust’s definition of love:

“No doubt very few people understand the purely subjective nature of the phenomenon that we call love, or how it creates, so to speak, a supplementary person, distinct from the person whom the world knows by the same name, a person most of whose constituent elements are derived from ourselves.”

Anyway,

How is it that we are attracted to certain people right away?

Is it…

the first sight?
the initial smell?
the very first touch?
their intellect? … sense of humor?
the way they talk?… walk?… smile?
having the same interests and dreams?
sharing similar agonies and suffering the same way?

Or… is it the combination of some of the above?

I believe everyone has their own subconscious priorities when it comes to attraction. However, in the era of social media, our priorities can easily be fooled…

Here’s why:

Sight or looks:

The importance of sight or looks should have come to an end as everyone looks good nowadays; taking advantage of technology, filters, editing on top of the freedom of being able to take many shots before choosing the most unnatural one and posting it online. This also makes the competition fierce as illusion surpasses beauty and the unlucky ones are the hidden beauties with little or no competence in photo editing…

It was extensive makeup, smart clothes and outstanding photo angles in the last couple of decades, but now it’s all combined with social media photo skills…

Smell:

Each one of us has their own distinct smell mostly regarding what we eat and how often we bath. As vanilla scented thugs and flora reeking divas roam the streets, frequent bathers preferring to use soap when bathing and wearing no perfume afterwards are on the losing side of the attraction war. But, perfume is like a mask. Nobody can wear it 24/7. The revelation of sour cheese aromatic feet and uncooked onion flavoured arm pits bring us to our senses after a warm, sunny day outdoors.

Intellect, interests and dreams:

Nobody wants to go on a date with a dumb person, so people tend to over exaggerate their intellectual levels by either talking about their field of expertise all the time or blabbering about a recent post they came across on the internet without fact checking.

As newly flirting couples discover how similar their interests are, they’re immediately drawn to their partner with a magical bond. They think they have found their soul mates… but little do they know that each person is making up some of the stuff only to be liked by their partner. Sharing the same dreams is more or less the same. “Dreams can change” is just a lame excuse.

But… it’s not all bad as there are things where we can’t be fooled…

Like a surprise genuine smile, a soul penetrating gaze and touch… When we hug someone and enclose their bodies into ours, we just feel if the person’s feelings are genuine or not, thanks to softly twitching muscles under the meat suit that we barely feel or the equally overwhelming hug-back we receive. Try to caress the house cat and feel it hum like a generator under your touch to feel the full sensation.

Any relationship based on the initial falsified versions of both parties tend to fail miserably in the end. Our feelings for the love of our lives expire just like some stale crackers long forgotten at the back of kitchen shelves as our true images take over. We show a different, a fake version of ourselves to others initially and ironically expect the others not to do that to us. We idolize our deepest fantasies not the people who are only human after all. Unfortunately, the candle lit by a fake (person) in a pitch black night can only survive until the daylight.

The moral?

There’s no moral if we just stick to our seemingly boring ourselves right from the beginning so that we don’t have to pretend afterwards.