I think the OP is pretty simple. If someone is attracted to you they will probably be nicer to you. I’m usually attracted to people who like/are nicer to me.
Whether that results in an actual romantic connection is a whole other question.
This is exactly my experience.
Unfortunately, I don’t think so. My experience also sounds like alice_in_wonderland’s, with the gender roles reversed. I will try very hard (without trying too hard ;), I’m not a social dolt ) to attract/impress/seduce certain females I find attractive and interesting, and it just doesn’t work.
On the other hand, here and there other females will occasionally take an obvious interest in me, and I don’t find them attractive. At all.
Maybe it’s a power thing? The person who wants it more is at a power disadvantage, and many people don’t feel comfortable with that situation? So it really has to be an almost perfectly equal pull for a healthy equilibrium to exist?
I find (and did a quick straw poll amongst my mates who were mostly of the same opinion) that women who have traits I find attractive but who AREN’T attracted to me become even more desirable by a considerable amount ,whereas ,ditto, traits but who are all over me
seem to lack some sort of spark.
Well the last part was theoretical but assuming I ever do come across a woman like that I’d expect that to be the case.
If you think you are neutral on a person, them showing an attraction to you has two possible effects.
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Wow! This person is so much more interesting than I formerly gave them credit for. (Increases your attraction).
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Ugh! This person is sort of creepy and makes me uncomfortable.
In other words, someone having an attraction to you will intensify any feeling you have towards them. Attractive people become more attractive. People you aren’t interested in become “that creepy kind of perverty guy.”
I think that attraction is mutual maybe 20% of the time, if you’re lucky, and in that I’m counting only the purely physical, as in every person who returns your lascivious stare as you walk down the street.
The thing is, we mostly don’t notice people being attracted to us, unless it’s either mutual or really, *really * blatant.
And once you get past the purely physical, it gets much more complicated. If I had a dime for every time I spent 20 minutes talking to some Adonis whom I can’t wait to get rid of because he hasn’t once in that 20 minutes said anything that remotely interested me, I could build a bionic mate. I’m sure that I’ve bored at least an equal number of men. Finding someone you’re attracted to on an intellectual level is approximately 637% harder than finding someone you wouldn’t mind doing with the lights on.
I’m almost never attracted to anyone who’s attracted to me. I know I’m doing something wrong, I just don’t have the guts to work on it.
Attraction has a lot to do with personality. There are a lot of different personalities out there. Since physical attraction is only part of the “attraction equation,” I don’t think people will always be mutually attracted because different people value different things in other people and that’s not always evident initially.
Example: While I’m married to someone I really enjoy spending time with and am also physically attracted to, I’ve dated my share of duds. When I had just gotten out of college, an older guy (about 10 years older) asked me out. I’m attracted to intelligent men and he was really witty and fun to talk to, so I said yes. However, the more he spoke, the less attracted I was. When he asked to marry me on the second date, it was all over.
Maybe I just don’t have very good radar for men, but it occurs to me that a lot of mutual attraction is being in the right place at the right time with the right person and being fortunate enough to like when you get beyond the surface. But that’s only my experience.
Attraction has a lot to do with personality. There are a lot of different personalities out there. Since physical attraction is only part of the “attraction equation,” I don’t think people will always be mutually attracted because different people value different things in other people and that’s not always evident initially.
Example: While I’m married to someone I really enjoy spending time with and am also physically attracted to, I’ve dated my share of duds. When I had just gotten out of college, an older guy (about 10 years older) asked me out. I’m attracted to intelligent men and he was really witty and fun to talk to, so I said yes. However, the more he spoke, the less attracted I was. When he asked to marry me on the second date, it was all over.
Maybe I just don’t have very good radar for men, but it occurs to me that a lot of mutual attraction is being in the right place at the right time with the right person and being fortunate enough to like what you see when you get beyond the surface. But that’s only my experience.
If attractions were always mutual, I’d be sleeping with Christie Turlington now.