I was not initially attracted to my husband when I first met him. He was a very nice guy and more conventionally attractive than I am, but we were several months into a friendship when I thought to myself, “Huh. He has nice eyes.”
But I still didn’t consider that attraction. Even after we became best friends and wanted to be together, I still hesitated because I didn’t know if I was physically attracted to him.
41 year old me thinks 19 year old me must have had a head injury, because I’m married to a very attractive man, and that became more apparent to me the more I got to know him. When I have an emotional connection with a man who is unbelievably good and kind and intelligent and funny, I become attracted to him, and I stay that way. And we have great physical chemistry too, which is not something you necessarily know based on someone’s attractiveness. It wasn’t until I gave him a chance that we made that physical connection and it is really strong.
When I look back at my adolescence and early adulthood, at all the guys I had a crush on or dated, they were guys all over the spectrum of conventional attractiveness. Some I was attracted to immediately and others I developed feelings for as I got to know them.
One funny story, though… In high school I had an enormous crush on a guy for years, hardly said two words to him, the most interaction we ever had was me absolutely pwning him at air hockey, and that sustained me for days.
After I met my husband and had been dating him a while, we attended a hometown play where we ran into this guy. And as we all shook hands, it became obvious to everyone present that… they looked exactly like one another. And I had no idea until that moment.
Wish that story ended there, but I later connected with former crush over Facebook, and discovered he was the worst kind of benevolent sexist transphobic asshole and as I blocked him all I felt was gratitude that I got to have my innocent crush as a girl without knowing the truth about him.
And obviously I picked the right one.